


The Heart of Everything

by cleflink



Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Steampunk, Dragons, Hurt Jensen Ackles, Inventors, M/M, Mystery Character(s), Rating is for violence and some gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-26
Updated: 2013-02-26
Packaged: 2017-12-03 17:13:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/700698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cleflink/pseuds/cleflink
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Jared moved to the country, he thought he'd left loud and chaotic back in the steam-powered copper-and-stone world of the city. He was right, up until a chance encounter with a wounded runaway turned his quiet little life into a not-so-quiet little life when the man's mysterious past started catching up with them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Heart of Everything

**Author's Note:**

> Still slowly reposting stuff from my LJ. This was written for the 2011 round of [spn-reversebang](http://spn-reversebang).
> 
> A less ugly version of the PDF than the one offered by AO3 is available [here](http://www.mediafire.com/view/?0t88nzyu87humhj).

Looking back later in life, Jared always figured it was somehow appropriate that the whole thing began on such a normal day.

\---

"That's the last of it, Jared," Genevieve said, setting the final bottle of milk down with a thunk. She nodded a teasing grin at Jared's supply crate. "Though I don't know quite where you're going to put it."

Jared grinned back wryly. "Me neither." The chaos of the market milled around them, comfortable and constant, as Jared tried to find a place for the bottle among his other foodstuffs. He shifted things aimlessly around for another few moments before giving it up as a bad job and settled for laying it carefully on top.

Genevieve laughed. "Because that's not precarious. Hope you're not planning to stock up anything else today."

"Sack of flour," Jared admitted.

"Unless you're planning on putting it on your head, I don't see quite how you're going to manage that." She hesitated briefly. "Why don't you come back into town next week instead of weighing yourself down like a pack mule? Surely you can manage two trips in a month."

Jared shook his head. "The farm won't run itself," he said easily. It was a familiar enough excuse that he got it off without a hitch. "You know how it is."

That made a Genevieve frown. "You should hire some extra help. You're running yourself ragged managing that farm all by yourself."

He wasn't, really, but that wasn't something Jared was about to admit. He shrugged again. "It's not so bad. I like keeping busy. And it's not that big a plot of land."

_It's big enough_ , Genevieve's expression said before she smoothed it over with a shy little smile. "Well, can you at least spare some time for dinner? I'm making my famous chicken pie."

"Not today, sorry," Jared said, and then felt like a heel when it made her face fall. If she hadn't been so sweet on him, he would have agreed just to make her stop looking so disappointed.

Genevieve huffed out a frustrated breath. "Jared, you can't just-" 

Her voice dropped off and Jared started to ask what was wrong before he realized that her attention was fixed on something over his shoulder. He turned and saw a cluster of people gathering at the far end of market, just outside the notary's.

"What's going on?" Genevieve asked, craning her neck to get a better look.

"I don't know." Jared shaded his eyes against the midday sun, squinting through the glare. There was a handful of men dressed in sober grays in the middle of the crowd, their sleeves emblazoned with an insignia Jared didn't recognize. He couldn't hear what they were saying from this distance, though one of them was brandishing what looked like a reward poster in his upraised hand.

Something glinted beneath the sweep of the man's coat, copper-bright under the sun, and Jared stiffened. That was an aether pistol. The man shifted again and his coat fell forward, hiding that telltale gleam, but Jared knew what he'd seen.

And it had no place here, where things were supposed to be so much easier.

"Looks important," Genevieve said, unaware of the way Jared's blood had turned to ice. She looked like she was mere seconds away from climbing right over the stall to go find out for herself.

Jared forced his eyes away from the crowd. "Well, it's got nothing to do with me." He hefted his crate. "It's time I was heading home, anyway."

"You sure?" Genevieve asked, distracted from the goings-on. "There's always room for one more."

Jared dredged up an apologetic smile for her. "Sorry. Maybe next time."

"I'll hold you to that," she said, and it sounded far closer to a warning than Jared suspected she'd meant it to.

He kept smiling anyway. "Fair enough." He tilted his head in farewell. "Take care, Genevieve."

"See you soon," Genevieve called after him, and Jared bit back a sigh as he headed away from the gray-suited men and their unwelcome intrusion.

It quickly became apparent to Jared that Genevieve had been right: there was absolutely no way he was going to be able to carry a sack of flour on top of everything else. He decided to head back to where he'd left his wagon and drop off his crate before heading to the mill. Which was rather a nuisance, since he'd already had to do so once today already, but Jared wasn't particularly partial to juggling so it would have to do.

Jared had managed to sell nearly all the produce he'd brought with him, so there was plenty of space in the back of his wagon to store his crate. His horse shifted impatiently and Jared snagged one of the remaining carrots to feed her.

"Nearly done," he promised. "We'll be out of here soon."

She snuffled at him, clearly unconvinced, and Jared gave her a fond pat on the neck before turning and heading back.

Normally, Jared would have cut straight through the centre of town to get to the mill - it was faster than taking the side streets and he enjoyed these rare opportunities to lose himself in the hustle and bustle of a busy day. But the memory of that pistol was still fresh in his mind and Jared had no desire to risk getting involved in anything that was serious enough to bring tech users into a quiet little village like this. So he stuck to the periphery of the market square, close enough to keep an eye out for trouble, but not so near that anyone would notice him.

As Jared skirted past, a young woman broke off from the crowd around the notary's and started heading Jared's way, three small children in tow behind her. Jared considered for a second, then stepped forward.

"Excuse me ma’am," he said, with a friendly smile. She paused and he gestured towards the chaos in the market square. "Can you tell me what’s going on?"

She looked at him for a moment and Jared did his best to radiate harmless curiosity. "There’s a group of men here from Kelio Prison," she said finally. She threw a worried glance at her children and dropped her voice as she added, "They're looking for an escaped prisoner."

Jared blinked, surprised. Those hadn't been Kelio uniforms. "That's," he started, then felt a tug on his trousers.

"They're riding on these fancy machines!" the woman's youngest son told him, beaming widely. He couldn't have been more than five.

"Ben!" The woman swung an apologetic look Jared's way. "I'm sorry about him. He likes to talk." 

Jared waved off her concern and crouched down to the boy's level. "Fancy machines?" he asked, in his own wide-eyed excitement voice. "Do they have big wheels on them?"

"Uh huh!" Ben nodded enthusiastically. "And there's a big metal thing on the back with smoke coming out and I could see all the gears inside and they're all little and _shiny_!" 

"That _is_ exciting," Jared said, with all the due gravity that big shiny machines deserved. "But I think you probably don't want to get too close. You wouldn't want to get run over, would you?"

"...no," Ben said, with a sullen little sigh.

Jared couldn't help a smile. He'd been exactly the same at that age - still was, most days. He fished around in his pocket for a moment and came up with a spare cog he'd probably been meaning to make use of and then forgot about. 

"Hey," he said to Ben, in a conspiratorial whisper. "You know what's even better than looking at shiny machines?"

Curious eyes blinked at him. "What?"

"Imagining your own." Jared pressed the cog into the boy's hand and he grinned at him. "But you need to plan them first. Maybe you can draw one for your mommy when you get home."

Ben grinned widely enough to show off the gaps between his teeth. "Yeah!"

The woman nodded a quiet thanks at Jared. "Come on, Ben," she said. "We're going to see Daddy. Say goodbye to the nice man."

"Bye, mister!" Ben waved and Jared waved back as they walked away.

He levered himself to his feet and glanced towards the marketplace. The crowd was still there, even denser now than it had been, and Jared couldn't help but wonder how many more men were already searching the village while these ones handled the locals. The thought sent a chill down his spine and Jared abruptly decided that he could live without flour for another few weeks. Even though it wasn't him they were looking for, Jared had no interest in being anywhere near men like that.

Decision made, Jared turned on his heel and started back the way he'd come. He paused as he passed the mouth of an alley, trying to decide if he felt paranoid enough to avoid the main streets as well. 

A faint rustling sound caught his attention and Jared half-turned towards it, alert for any sign of danger. The sound scraped closer, resolving itself into the slow, uneven drag of tired footsteps, and Jared shifted on the spot, squinting into the darkness. 

Then a man appeared out of the shadows and Jared bit back a sharp, startled curse.

The man was pale and worn thin, with a pair of bent, smudged glasses on his nose and his filthy hair plastered flat to his forehead. His clothes were clearly meant for a smaller man: his vest pulled tight around his arms and his trousers hung a good few inches above his ankles. His feet were bare.

But the thing that drew Jared’s attention most was the blood.

The man's tattered clothes were striped in shades of scarlet red and rusty brown, thickly enough that Jared could actually taste the distinctive copper tang on the air. Blood streaked down across the man's face like tears and the skin of his cheeks was torn and scabbed. One of the man’s hands was pressed heavily against the wall, looking like it was the only thing keeping him upright. Jared could see the same wicked-looking wounds marring the skin there too and he abruptly felt sick.

The man stopped a few feet away and stared at him, his chest heaving with laboured breaths and his muscles tension-tight beneath his too-small clothes.

"It’s okay," Jared said automatically, holding his hands up in a calming gesture. "I’m not gonna hurt you."

The man said nothing, eyes flicking from Jared's face to something over Jared's shoulder. Jared chanced a backwards glance, but couldn't see anything in the empty street worth looking at.

When he faced forwards again, the man was still standing there, something like desperation fighting through the determined fatigue on his blood-slicked face.

"Are you okay?" Jared asked, which was probably the most inane thing he could possibly have said. He coughed and tried again. "I mean, is there anything I can do?"

"...help me," the guy said after a long moment, in a voice that was rusty with disuse. "Please."

Jared was pulling off his coat almost before the guy had finished speaking. "Put this on," he said. "It'll hide the worst of the blood. My wagon's waiting out near the main road. You think you can make it there?"

The man paused in the middle of struggling into Jared's coat to give him a disdainful little look that reminded Jared of the cat they'd had while he was a child. _Of course_ , that look seemed to say and Jared was impressed that this guy could still manage it when he looked about ten deep breaths away from keeling right over.

A glance up the street showed that the traffic was actually a little lighter than it should have been at this time of day. Jared wondered how the men in the gray uniforms would react if they knew that the attention they were drawing to themselves was actually making it easier for their runaway - for there was no way this man wasn't the one they were looking for - to get away. 

"We're going to have to go slowly," Jared warned, even though he doubted the man could go much faster than a stagger anyway. "Make sure we don't stand out."

The man nodded, took a deep breath and took his hand off the wall. Jared stepped unthinkingly in, sure the guy was about to end up on his face, and nearly had a heart attack when the man jolted back like he'd been struck, a dark, warning snarl curling his lips. 

"Sorry," Jared said, after a beat of startled silence. "I didn't- sorry." He coughed and gestured towards the street. "We should..."

"Yeah," the man said, more of an exhale than a word. He let his arms fall from where they'd come up to protect his face and took a shaky step forward. Underneath all the blood, his face went even whiter. 

Jared bit his lip. "Can I... is it okay if I touch you?"

The stare he got this time was longer and filled with things Jared couldn't even begin to understand. Finally, the man nodded.

Jared moved carefully forward, holding out an arm for the man to take. He waited, unmoving, as the man took another step towards him, then another, until he was close enough to fist a hand in Jared's sleeve and for Jared to rest a guiding hand on his hip. The man flinched at the touch and Jared could feel the deliberate way the muscles under his hand relaxed after that initial jolt. The fabric under Jared's hand was tacky and wet and Jared fought the urge to cringe at sight of the tattered flaps of skin that shifted back and forth on the back of the man's hand every time his fingers tensed.

Jared took a deep, calming breath. "Come on," he said.

It took all of Jared's self-control not to drag them both into the nearest alley the moment they stepped out onto the street and into full view of anyone who might happen to walk past. Under his hand, he could feel the man trembling, though he couldn't have said whether it was out of fear or pain. For his part, Jared was pretty sure he was about to jitter to pieces at any moment. 

Jared stuck to the back roads and alleys as much as possible, zigzagging them through the village. The few people they passed weren't particularly interested in stopping to talk so Jared was able to get away with casual waves and smiles as they staggered past. His runaway kept his head down to hide the ruin of his face while Jared's coat helped keep the rest of him looking tolerably presentable. His mouth was set in a grim line, his steps slow but determined. Jared couldn't even begin to imagine how he was still up and walking when he was in such a state. 

Finally, after what felt like a lifetime, they reached Jared's wagon. "This is it," Jared said, relieved and slightly giddy with adrenaline. He practically had to drag the man the last few steps towards it and he couldn't help quickening his pace for those last few steps towards safety. The man made a wordless, pained sound when Jared let him go long enough to fumble open the stays holding the ramp closed.

"You can lie down in the back," Jared told him as he tugged down the ramp. "It'll keep you hidden and it'll be easier than trying to sit up front."

The ramp touched down with a bump, and Jared turned with a hand outstretched. "Come on, let's get you ho..." he faltered, a thought occurring to him. "Or, um, do you have somewhere you want me to take you? Cause I was gonna bring you back to my farm to bandage those wounds and let you get some rest, but if you'd rather go somewhere else..."

Jared left the sentence hanging and the man blinked at him, eyes glazed with pain and exhaustion. There was absolutely no recognition on his face.

"Right," Jared said, and took the man's arm again. "Come on."

Once he had the guy safely stowed in the wagon, armed with a blanket that Jared had found in the back, Jared took a quick moment to make sure they hadn't left any blood smears in the dirt. Once he was satisfied that they wouldn't be leading anyone straight to them, he clambered up into the driver's seat. His horse nickered in greeting and Jared patted her flank before nudging the wagon forward. No shouted exclamation or frenzied chase followed after them and Jared allowed himself a small sigh of relief. They'd made it.

Now, he just had to hope that the guy would live long enough for Jared to get him home.

After the nervous tension of sneaking the both of them out of the village, it never occurred to Jared that getting the man cleaned up would prove to be the most challenging part of the whole endeavour.

The sun was hanging low in the sky by the time Jared's wagon rolled to a stop outside his farmhouse. Jared wasted no time in swinging down and unhitching his horse. He ran an apologetic hand down her neck and promised her a good rubdown later as he put her out to pasture. Then he squared his shoulders and went to check on the guy bleeding to death in the back of his wagon.

The smell of blood was strong on the air when Jared pulled down the ramp and he was dishearteningly unsurprised to see wide smears of red streaked across the wood planking. The man himself was lying bonelessly against one wall, his eyes closed and his chest rising in slow, shallow breaths. 

Jared hefted himself into the wagon and edged forwards on his knees. "Hey," he said gently, and reached out to touch the man just above his ankle.

Pain shot through him before he'd even realized the man had moved and he grunted out a surprised breath as he fell back on his ass. The man was out of reach in less than a heartbeat, pressing up against the wall of the wagon like he planned to sink straight through it. He struggled to stand and Jared could see the effort it was costing him carved into the flat line of his mouth and the tension trembling through his limbs.

"Hey," Jared said again, wheezing around the word. His arms wrapped protectively around his stomach without asking him about it first. He wasn't really inclined to care about the show of vulnerability. "Hey, it's okay. Remember me? We're at my farm. You're safe here."

That earned him a hazy blink and a slight lessening of the cornered menace in the man's stance. Jared stayed exactly where he was, keeping his voice low and gentle. "It's okay, you're safe. They won't find you here. We need to get you cleaned up, okay?"

The man didn't answer but Jared decided to take the lack of overt threat as an agreement.

"Good, that's good. I'm going to climb out of the wagon now," he said, gesturing behind him. "You think you can get out after me?"

Jared waited until the man gave a short, terse nod, and then eased himself carefully back down the ramp, doing his best to ignore the groaning of his sore ribs.

The sunshine was over-bright after being in the covered dim inside the wagon and Jared blinked rapidly against the glare. The wagon creaked and swayed as Jared's runaway made his slow, shaky way down the ramp in a dark mass of blood and fabric.

The man looked like he was expecting to be attacked any moment: wary, defensive and considerably more alert than Jared would have expected given the situation. Sunshine glinted off the man's glasses as he turned his head and Jared noticed that the lenses were tinted; they turned his eyes green whenever the light caught them the right way. It was a style Jared hadn't seen since he'd moved out of the city and it added yet another layer of unanswered questions to the mystery surrounding this man.

"It's this way," Jared said. He tilted his head towards the house and took a step back, waiting.

For a moment, Jared felt sure the man was going to bolt after all. His eyes darted from Jared to the road, to the house and back again, desperation riding high on his ruined face. Jared didn't move, doing his best to look calm and nonthreatening. Finally, the guy's shoulders sagged and he nodded.

Jared offered him an encouraging smile. "Good. The wash tub's out back. Follow me."

Turning his back was a nerve-wracking experience in more ways than one, but Jared did his best to seem unconcerned about being followed by a fugitive who was clearly more dangerous while two-thirds dead than Jared was on his best day. The walk around the house to the bathing room seemed to take years and Jared was hyperconscious of the slow, staggering set of footsteps following in his wake. The creak of the bathing room door seemed staggeringly loud as Jared pushed it open.

Jared led the way in, glad that there was still enough sun shining through the overhead windows to save him from having to fiddle with a lamp in the narrow quarters. There was barely enough space for both of them to stand next to the wide, intricately inlaid tub and Jared moved hurriedly over to the boiler to give his guest some breathing room.

"Just a second," he said, bending to light the kindling. The room was deadly quiet behind him and Jared did his best not to fumble the matches, focusing on getting the boiler turned on and the water heated as quickly as possible.

When the kindling was burning merrily, Jared straightened and gave the man a smile. "That should only take a couple of minutes to warm up," he told him. "If you want to get out of those clothes, I'll head up to the house to see if I can find you something clean to wear."

A wordless nod answered him. Jared watched the guy fighting to remove his coat for all of ten seconds before asking, "Would you like me to help?" 

"Yes," the man, after another long moment of guarded silence. "Please."

Jared eased back into the guy's personal space and watched him fighting the urge to run.

"That's it," Jared encouraged. He touched one hand lightly onto the man's arm. "Okay?" he asked, and waited until he got another terse nod in response. "Let's get you out of all this, huh?"

Blood had soaked through Jared's coat down the back and shoulders in dark, sticky swathes. It made the fabric heavy and hard to move and it took the both of them to get it off. Jared let it fall to the floor as soon as it was free; he suspected it was rather a lost cause anyway, so the addition of another hour or two before he tried to wash out the stains wouldn't make much difference.

They peeled off the man's vest and shirt in one go and Jared had to wince at the way the scabs and tatters of skin came away with the fabric. His chest was a mess of mottled, blood-clotted skin and Jared fought the urge to gag, horrified. A glance upwards revealed that the man was watching him with a measured blandness, as though he was just waiting for Jared to panic and send him on his way.

Instead, Jared swallowed down his revulsion and faced the guy with a wan attempt at a smile. "I guess we're going to need some bandages too, huh?"

The man grunted noncommittally, then reached down to fumble with the laces of his trousers. He wobbled a little and Jared offered an instinctive arm that earned him a hissed warning for his trouble. "Okay," Jared surrendered and backed off to go check the temperature on the boiler instead. 

He twisted on the spigots as soon as the heat gauge levelled off, and a puff of air preceded the sudden gush of steaming water into the tub. "There we go." Jared turned his head and offered the guy another smile. "I'm going to head up to the house to get you some clothes and bandages. Go ahead and get in when you're ready. You can mess with these valves here to change the water temperature. You don't have to worry about running out of hot water; the water's piped right out of the well and the boiler will keep heating it until the fire goes out."

"...thank you," the man said, with a gravity that was tempered with the same wariness that Jared knew was thrumming through every inch of him.

"My pleasure," Jared said. "I'll be right back. Try not to boil yourself, okay?"

The man nodded again and turned towards the tub. His back was as much of a ruin as the rest of him and Jared could see the heavy shadow of what looked like bruising sweeping across his shoulder blades underneath the mess of blood and tattered skin. The man hooked his hands in the waistband of his trousers and Jared left him his modesty as he turned and headed up to the house with someone else's blood smeared all over his hands.

All told, it took well over an hour to get Jared's guest cleaned and bandaged up. The process could have gone a lot faster if the guy hadn't panicked when Jared tried to help, lashing out with both fists and nearly sending Jared sprawling face-first into the tub, but Jared hadn't been about to press the issue. So he leaned up against the doorjamb for the duration of the exercise, watching the guy wince with every stroke of the washcloth, his glasses steamed up in the fog and his wary eyes fixed squarely on Jared the entire time.

Before long the water was muddy and clouded and Jared got a chance to see what had been hidden beneath all that gore. It was terrifying. It looked like someone had been peeling the man's skin off in strips; wide swathes of red, weeping sores spread out across his entire body and, while most of them didn't look to be bleeding freely, more than one was thick with milky pus. 

Perhaps the worst part was that it didn't look like the damage had been done all at once. Many of the sores were still puffy and fresh, but some were scabbed thickly over and still others were little more than shiny patches of too-pink skin. It made Jared sick to his stomach to think that this... _torture_ had been an ongoing thing.

Once he was as clean and dry as he was going to get, the guy wrapped the bandages around himself with slow, careful deliberation. Jared had to fold his arms across his chest and dig his fingers into his skin to keep himself from reaching out to help. Spots of red and brown were already soaking through the white fabric by the time the guy was done, the bandages hanging sloppy and not-quite tight. Struggling into Jared's offered clothing was a challenge all its own and Jared could tell that even the man's indomitable will wasn't going to be keeping him upright for much longer. 

Jared walked beside him up to the house, ignoring the slurred protests that didn't quite sound like words and the stiff line of the guy's spine against his palm. For wont of a better place to put him, Jared dumped him in his own bed, figuring that at least he'd have enough space to stretch out.

"Rest," Jared said, when the man immediately tried to struggle upright. Daring greatly, Jared reached out to push lightly at one bandaged shoulder. "I'll keep a look out."

His guest frowned at him and Jared didn't need to be a mind reader to know that he wasn't overly comforted by the idea of leaving Jared to keep watch.

"I know," Jared told him soothingly. "We'll introduce ourselves in the morning. But right now, you need to sleep."

He lifted his hand and stepped back, and was relieved when the man made no further attempt to get off the bed.

"Rest," he said again. "I'll be right here when you wake up."

And Jared didn't know if that would be considered a good thing or not but, as he paused in the doorway, he was almost sure he saw relief flit across a ruined face as the man closed his eyes with his hands flat at his sides and his glasses still perched on his nose.

Jared confined his activities to the house while his guest slept, not about to risk him waking up alone in a strange place. He poked his head into the bedroom a handful of times, but the man never so much as twitched. And that could have been a sign of trust, but Jared suspected it was rather more the result of necessity. If the man had been well, Jared was sure, he wouldn't have let his guard down within a league of Jared.

The waiting felt interminable. Jared spent most of the time puttering around aimlessly, tackling the myriad of household chores he never seemed to get around to and tinkering with the few small machines he'd left lying about the last time he'd been stuck inside with nothing better to do. The entire time, he was hyperconscious of every creak and shift of the house and his body twitched with the need to race upstairs at the first sign that his guest might need him.

Which made it all the more ironically appropriate that the man announced his return from the land of sleep not with noise, but with stillness.

Jared was in the kitchen, throwing together something vaguely resembling stew for lunch. He'd just started dicing up some leftover chicken when the sudden sense of being watched made him pause. The only noise he could hear was the quiet ticking of the clock in the front room, but there was no mistaking the palpable sort of silence lingering in the space behind him. 

Slowly, Jared set the knife he'd been using in the wash basin, grabbed a cloth to dry off his hands and turned around with his smile at the ready.

"Good morning," he said to the stiffly wary man standing in his kitchen. "How are you feeling?"

"Where am I?" the man demanded, in a voice that sounded like it had been dragged down a gravel road behind Jared's wagon.

"My farm," Jared said. "About twenty five miles outside Trescid. You've been asleep for nearly two days. Do you remember how you got here?"

"Moving room," the guy said after a moment, obviously still a bit muddled from the blood loss. 

Jared nodded anyway. "In my wagon, yeah. Got you washed up some, but those wounds are going to take time to heal." He tilted his head towards the small pot on the kitchen table. "I made up a salve that should help. Do you think you can eat?"

The guy shook his head like he couldn't understand a word Jared was saying. "What?"

"You should probably try," Jared continued, never losing his easy tone. "Your body's going to need a whole lot of energy to put itself back together. You lost a lot of blood."

"...what are you talking about?" the guy demanded, with a frown that pulled sharply on the scabs across his cheeks. "Who are you?"

"I'm Jared." Jared said. He raised his hand in a half-wave. "Hello."

The man's expression darkened. "Is that supposed to mean something to me? What do you want?" 

Jared shrugged. "Right now, I mostly just want you to eat something, if you can. It's not just those clothes that are making it look like you're nothing but skin and bones, you know."

It was true. The hems of Jared's trousers were puddling on the ground around the guy's feet and the cuffs of his shirt were hanging down over the guy's hands, but the way everything gaped slackly around his middle was too extreme to be explained away by oversized clothing. Besides, Jared had seen him naked yesterday; the chicken carcass on the counter had more meat on it than this guy did.

"Sorry," the man said, bitingly cold. His teeth bared on something that couldn't be called a smile. "My last jailers didn't pay too much attention to feeding time."

"Your-" Jared trailed off when he realized just what the guy was implying. "A jailer? Me?" Jared gestured around his cozy little kitchen. "You cannot seriously think this looks like a prison. My _horse_ could break in here. And she doesn't have thumbs."

The guy snorted, like any other possibility wasn't even worth considering. "You really expect me to believe that I could walk out of here right now and you wouldn't stop me?"

Jared nodded. "Yep." 

A touch of what looked like genuine anger shaded the edges of the man's scowl and Jared held up his hands. 

"Look," he said. "If you want to go I'm not gonna stop you, honest. The door's over there. I'll give you directions back to Trescid. But you're more than welcome to stay, if you like." The guy was staring at him like he had two heads and Jared shrugged sheepishly. "You might want to wait until your skin's not falling off before moving on." 

"Why are you doing this?" the guy asked, sounding heartbreakingly bewildered beneath the all the anger and desperation. "There are people after me."

Jared shrugged again. "We're pretty isolated here; it'd take my closest neighbour at least twenty minutes get here from his house. And he never comes to visit anyway. You should be safe."

"You don't even know me!"

"No, I don't," Jared agreed. "But I refuse to believe that anyone who'd treat another person like you've been treated can possibly be in the right. No matter what you might or might not have done. You can stay as long as you like."

That earned him a long, considering look. Jared waited it out.

"Jensen," the guy said finally, which didn't make much sense until he held out a bandage-wrapped hand and offered Jared the shade of what looked like a gorgeous smile. "My name is Jensen."

Jared couldn't have kept from beaming if he tried. "Jared," he said again, and reached out carefully to shake Jensen's hand. "Nice to meet you." He waved his other hand vaguely in the direction of the stove. "I was just making lunch. I hope you like chicken stew."

Jensen proved to be an entirely unobtrusive house guest. A lot of that probably had to do with the fact that he spent most of the first fortnight sleeping, but Jared couldn't really fault him for that. When Jensen wasn't sleeping he was usually slumped in a chair in the sitting room, looking grumpy, ill and exhausted. He made very little attempt to speak to Jared and actually seemed to spend a good portion of his waking hours trying to pretend that Jared wasn't there at all. Which was a little hurtful, honestly, but Jared decided that he could be the bigger man in all this. He was used to silence, after all, and it wasn't much of a surprise that Jensen wasn't interested in idle conversation.

Which was not to say that he left Jensen entirely to his own devices. Jared made sure Jensen ate at regular intervals and led him down to the bath often enough to keep his wounds flushed out and clean. Other than that, though, Jared mostly kept out of his way. 

Jared's bedroom became Jensen's domain. Jared never asked for it back and Jensen never offered it, not that Jared would have accepted even if he had. Jared stayed out unless he was swapping one set of bloodstained sheets for fresh ones and he manfully resisted the urge to close the permanently-open window to ward off the chill of early mornings. Jensen's stacks of borrowed clothes filled Jared's closet and the not-entirely unpleasant smell of the salve stayed thick and spicy on the air whether Jensen was in there or not. Jensen continued to struggle with his bandages on his own, no doubt contorting himself into all sorts of uncomfortable positions to be able to manage it.

And maybe Jared lingered by the door sometimes, listening to the quiet rhythm of Jensen's breath as he slept, but that was his own business. 

For his own part, Jared set himself up on the poor excuse for a bed he'd dragged into his crafting room after the last time he'd fallen asleep at his drafting table and woken up stiff and covered in ink. The narrow pallet made for a generally rotten night's sleep, but it was preferable to bunking down on the floor. 

Jared stuck close to the house during the day, focusing on the tasks that could be easily accomplished within either earshot or line of sight. The thought of going into town and leaving Jensen completely unprotected made him feel anxious, so he didn't bother. It meant that they started eating a whole lot of vegetables when Jared's other foodstuffs ran low, but it wasn't like there was much better to do with his crops when he wasn't going into Trescid to sell them.

Jared knew that any other farmer in his situation wouldn't have been able to spend nearly so much time away from the fields, especially in the harvesting season. By rights, Jared's entire crop should have been ruined by that kind of neglect, especially when he didn't have anyone to pick up the slack.

Jared had told people time and again that the reason he rarely came into town was that he was just too busy. It was a good excuse. Most farms this size would have needed at least two hired hands to help with the workload and, even then, Jared should have been out in the fields from sunup to sundown every day just to keep up. Everyone knew that farms couldn't just up and run themselves, after all.

Except, Jared's pretty much could.

Compared to the tech he'd grown up with, Jared's small cadre of farming machines was nowhere even close to impressive. They were simple and utilitarian, with none of the flair and flash of the machines he'd built in his younger days. They suited his purposes, though: not only could he avoid the hassle of taking someone else on after he'd gone to such lengths to get some space to himself, but they also let him spend plenty of time in his workshop instead of messing about with vegetables.

Nothing particularly exciting ever came out of his workshop, if he was being honest. Jared had given up the right to make a living as a mechanist when he'd packed up and moved to the country without stopping to do much more than quit his job. Tech was the purview of the cities, the worlds of monoliths in copper and stone where steam and cogs and innovation were the lifeblood of society. Sometimes, if Jared closed his eyes when there was a storm outside, he could almost imagine that he was listening to steady chug of pistons rumbling under the earth in time with the grinding click of gears.

Jared didn't miss the city, not really, but the love of invention was ground deep into his bones. No amount of country living could change that, regardless of how much he loved his farm, or how much the people around him distrusted the mechanical chaos that the cities thrived on. His house was mostly free of gadgetry, both because he didn't really need it and because it would have been hard to explain if he ever did have visitors, but that didn't stop him Jared spending as many hours as he could drafting and building and generally turning himself into a grinning, sweaty mess of copper shavings and grease just because he could. 

The results of Jared's tinkering were always interesting. He built a fleet of machines to tend his farm. He designed a water heater for the bathing room that he suspected would make the entire district willing to put aside its distrust of tech if it meant people could draw themselves a warm bath at a moment's notice. He put together silly little toys that could climb walls, crack eggs, heat the floors. Then he'd invariably get bored, dismantle them and use the pieces to start all over again. 

His father would have called it inventing for the sake of inventing. Jared considered that a far more positive thing than his father had ever meant it to be.

Jensen's presence, unfortunately, put rather a damper on the amount of time Jared felt he could spend indulging his inner mechanist. The noise from his crafting tools was loud enough to wake the dead, and the clamour that came from shifting and welding and testing was only marginally less dramatic. So Jared restricted himself to working on little fiddly things that could be built with the cogs and belts he had lying around his crafting room and could be assembled with nothing more complicated or noisy than his handheld soldering iron. Which made him fairly itch with inactivity but he did his best to channel his frustration into working at his drafting table, designing instead of building.

After a few false starts, he decided to design a pair of mechanical boots that were more like the work he'd done as a younger man than the utilitarian machines he built these days. He was pulling out all the creative stops on this one: they'd increase their wearer's speed, cut down on their physical exertion and, if Jared was really clever, actually reduce friction between the boots and the ground. Drafting schematics for power boots wasn't a complete fix for the restlessness prickling under Jared's skin, but it certainly resulted in a great many sleepless nights spent at the drafting table while Jared tried to get things _just_ right. He wouldn't know for sure if the pages and pages of plans he drafted were workable until he actually built them, which drove him half mad, but Jared wasn't about to risk Jensen's well-being for the sake of his own eccentricities. 

Though the urge to get back into the workshop gave him even more incentive for hoping that Jensen's recovery was swift.

Gradually, Jensen grew stronger. He started spending less of his time in bed and more of it on the couch in the sitting room, powering through Jared's bookshelves. He seemed equally interested in everything except the few books on steam energy that Jared had figured were innocuous enough to have on open display. Which seemed a little odd considering the very urban affectation of Jensen's tinted glasses, but Jared had known other city people who hadn't cared much about technology one way or another. It wasn't his business anyway.

Jared didn't immediately go back to his pre-Jensen schedule once Jensen started showing signs of better health. He did start making more frequent trips out into the fields to see what kind of state his vegetables were in, but for the most part he was content to stay around the house, working on his surprisingly satisfying new project and joining Jensen in spending his afternoons with a book in his hands and a lazy feeling of contentment settling in his bones.

Jensen's attitude improved much more slowly than his body did. He nearly fell out of his chair in his haste to get away the first time Jared joined him in the sitting room, despite the fact that Jared made no effort to approach him. Jensen's back was rigid and tense as he strode away, but Jared refused to be driven out of his home by a prickly house guest and so he stayed right where he was and read for several hours before getting up to make dinner. The next day, he did exactly the same and, this time, Jensen managed to stay in his seat for a good hour before fleeing, though he spent more time staring at Jared than reading. Jared read until dinner time, then marked his page so he'd know where to pick up again the next afternoon.

For the first few days of this system, Jensen was as likely to leave the sitting room when Jared came in as he was to sit and stare blankly at his book with his hands clenched white-knuckled on the cover. Gradually, he calmed enough to go about his afternoon without looking like he was about to do a header out the window, though Jared didn't doubt that Jensen would probably lodge a book in Jared's skull if he dared to move any closer. 

Eventually, they settled into a pattern. Jared woke up far too early considering how late he'd been working at his drafting table the night before, made himself breakfast, then went out into the fields for a couple of hours before coming home, making lunch, and slumping onto the couch for a quiet afternoon with his book. Jensen got up at some point after Jared had gone, ate the breakfast Jared had left out for him and then presumably spent the rest of the morning either reading or sleeping until Jared came back and fed them both lunch. 

Jared didn't push; he talked what he considered to be an entirely appropriate amount over lunch and dinner and said nothing at all when Jensen was reading. More than once he caught Jensen staring at him over the top of his book when he didn't think Jared was looking, wearing an expression that suggested that he thought Jared was the strangest person in existence. And while Jared could candidly admit that strange was a pretty good word to describe him, it made his insides twist to know that what Jensen was so puzzled by was nothing more than basic human kindness.

The first time Jensen actually answered one of the many mostly-rhetorical questions that Jared regularly threw out, Jared's jaw nearly hit the table. He recovered with a decent attempt at composure, though he suspected that the ridiculous grin on his face ruined the effect. Jensen didn't call him on it, just waited silently while Jared found his tongue and turned it into the first real conversation they'd actually had.

The event didn't prompt an immediate flood of camaraderie between them; Jared still ended up talking to himself as often as not and there were some days when Jensen didn't open his mouth at all. But, like everything with Jensen, that got slowly better as well. Their conversations grew easier, their interactions became smoother and the Jensen under all that wary stoicism turned out to be clever, keen and thoroughly enjoyable. 

They didn't talk about what had happened to Jensen to leave him half-dead and being chased across the countryside by a group of heavily-armed men masquerading as prison officers. Jensen was clearly waiting for Jared to ask, expectation and dismay flicking across his face any time the conversation even drew close, but Jared had spent enough time in close quarters with the man to know that he wouldn't accomplish anything but driving Jensen away if he asked. 

As far as Jared was concerned, it was an easy decision: he'd opened his home to Jensen, Jensen hadn't tried to kill him or steal his stuff, and it was surprisingly nice to have Jensen around. It wasn't much worth his effort to wonder where Jensen had come from. Jensen would tell him if he wanted to and, until then, Jared was perfectly happy with things as they were.

One very early morning, a good five weeks after he'd brought Jensen home, Jared yawned his way down the stairs to find Jensen sitting at the kitchen table, dressed and waiting for him.

Jared blinked. "You're up early."

Jensen ignored him, which was nothing new. "Where are you going?"

"To check on the radishes?" Jared ventured. 

That earned him a nod, like Jensen had just had something confirmed for him. 

"I'm coming," Jensen said, in a tone of voice that didn't take no for an answer.

"Um, okay?" Jared said and, just like that, their lives shifted yet again. 

Every morning after that, Jensen would be waiting at the kitchen table when Jared came down and they would go out into the fields together to help Jared's bots take care of the crops. Jensen's still-healing wounds meant that he couldn't do quite as much mucking around in the dirt as Jared did, but he turned out to be a quick study on the other parts of job and Jared found, to his surprise, that he quite liked having the company while he worked. And that would have made him wonder if he should have hired some help a long time ago, except he had the feeling it was almost entirely because it was _Jensen_ who was out there with him.

So he gave Jensen a hat to keep off the sun and taught him how to check the nutrient levels in the soil.

When things finally did go sideways, it wasn't for any reason that Jared would have seen coming in a million years.

"It's no good," he sighed, sitting back on his heels and swiping a dirt-smeared hand across his brow. The irrigation bot slumped sadly over his lap, its front hatch open to show off the worn down gears that had made the motor coil snap in the first place. He glanced up at Jensen, who was standing a few steps back. "I can't fix this here."

"Now what?" Jensen asked, reaching out to offer Jared a hand. Touching was a recent development and Jared ignored the tension he could feel thrumming under Jensen's skin as he carefully pulled himself up, mindful of Jensen's wounds. "You junk that thing and water the plants yourself?"

Jared shook his head, grabbed a wrench from his bag and reached for the bolts fastening the bot down. "Not if I can help it. Help me out here."

Jensen looked skeptical, but stepped gamely forward to hold the bot upright while Jared worked it free. Between them, they managed to lug the bot to the shed where he kept most of his farming tools and Jared unearthed a wheelbarrow for them to dump it in. He led the way to his workshop, absently aware of Jensen following along in his wake.

"What's this place?" Jensen asked, while Jared fiddled with the lock. "Is this where you hide all the junk you can't bear to g-"

The door rattled smoothly open and Jensen's voice cut off abruptly.

Jared threw him a grin. "It's where I hide all the junk I make myself. Come on."

Jared deposited the wheelbarrow beside a mostly-clear worktop and headed over to the bin of unused gears against the far wall, breathing in the familiar mix of metal and dust on the air.

"Shouldn't take too long to get him up and running again," he said over his shoulder, picking out a couple of gears that looked like they'd be about the right size and reaching to pull a length of wire down off the shelf. "I don't have a spare motor coil on hand, but they don't take long to make so- are you okay?"

Jared paused in the act of laying his armload down on the worktop, startled by the sight of Jensen standing frozen in the doorway wearing an expression that Jared couldn't have deciphered if his life depended on it.

A trickle of concern ran down his spine. "Jensen?"

Jensen started like he'd just woken up from a deep sleep. "You're a mechanist," he said and Jared had never known anyone who could make such a simple sentence sound so accusing.

Jared shrugged. "More or less. I mean, I keep my hand in but I don't do it for a living or anything anymore."

Jensen's shoulders stiffened and Jared realized too late that that had absolutely been the wrong thing to say. 

"For a living," Jensen said, in a precariously calm tone of voice. "You worked as a mechanist for a living." 

"I-" Jared started, and then didn't know what to do with the rest of the sentence. Jensen had sounded almost betrayed, which Jared didn't know how to deal with at all.

Jensen took a few short steps into the room and looked around, eyes sharp as they snapped from object to object as if cataloguing their faults. It made Jared want to squirm and apologize, though he had no real idea what for.

Then Jensen's gaze landed on Jared's main worktop and his expression went deadly dark. "What is that?"

"What?" Jared glanced over and realized that he'd left a bottle of drakis on the table. It had crystallized across the top where some of the fluid had seeped out around the cork. 

"Oh, hell," Jared cursed, hustling over to grab the bottle and put it away in the storage cellar where it belonged. It wasn't until he was crouched, one hand tugging on the heavy ring on the cellar door that he realized just what he was forgetting.

"Um," he said, and twisted around to find Jensen still stood in the middle of the room, his face like a thundercloud.

"What. Is. That," Jensen bit out and Jared had to fight down the sudden, violent urge to flee in the face of his obvious anger.

"Drakis," Jared managed, forcing the word out around an unexpected thickness in his throat. "Needs to be stored in warm places or it crystallizes before you can use it."

Jensen's expression didn't change. "Use it for what?"

"Pretty much anything," Jared said, hoping that honesty was the best way to go right now. "It conducts heat better than any metal I've ever seen and it actually makes steam run hotter. You can make all sorts of crazy tech work when you use drakis on it."

"Is that how you're going to fix that _machine_?" Jensen demanded, spitting out the word like a curse.

"No," Jared said truthfully. "It'd be a waste to use it for something so basic. The Metallurgy Guild makes the stuff and, since they've got a monopoly on the creation process, it's really expensive. Besides," Jensen was glaring at him like he was trying to burn a hole in his head and Jared ran an awkward hand along the back of his neck. There was no point in shutting up now, though, so he took a deep breath and continued, "It feels kind of like cheating, you know? I'd rather make things that work because I did a good job designing them, not because I'm using some wonder metal to hold them together."

Jensen was silent for a moment and Jared dared a glance up to find Jensen still staring at him with that bottomless expression.

"Jen-" 

Jensen turned on his heel and left, the door banging loudly shut behind him.

An immense silence followed his departure and Jared sat there for a long moment, bottle of drakis held forgotten in his hand. He wished he knew what had just happened.

Eventually, Jared roused himself and put the drakis carefully away before levering himself to his feet and turning his attention to his neglected irrigation bot. Chasing after Jensen wouldn't do anything but make things worse and finding something to do with his hands sounded fucking fantastic right now.

Jared spent a good couple of hours replacing the bot's mechanics and hammering out a new motor coil. The entire time, he was hyperconscious of the whine of the machines, the steady pump of steam up out of the engines. When he was done, he wheeled the bot back into the field and spent another half hour getting it reattached to its rails and making sure that everything was working properly.

Then he dithered around on nothing in particular until he could gather up enough courage to head back to the house.

Though he half-expected to discover that Jensen had disappeared from of his life as abruptly as he'd entered it, Jared was relieved to find him in the sitting room, staring at the large painting hanging above the mantle. Jared was sure Jensen had to have looked at it a thousand times before now, yet the man was studying the whorls of black and gold paint like he'd never seen them before.

Jared stopped a careful distance behind him and waited.

Thankfully, Jensen didn't leave him in suspense for long. "You haven't been in that... room while I've been here," he said, with his characteristic ability to ask questions that weren't really questions.

Jared shrugged. "I've been a little distracted, I guess."

Jensen didn't react to that in any way Jared could see. He tilted his head. "What is it?"

"What is what?" Jared asked, confused.

"The painting," Jensen said, waving a hand at it. "What is it?"

Jared looked past Jensen's shoulder at the massive bird-like creature soaring across the canvas. "A dragon."

Jensen glanced at him, one eyebrow raised. "A dragon."

Jared shrugged again, embarrassed. "Well, that's what it's supposed to be, anyway. S'not like it's really accurate or anything."

"Why?"

"Because dragons don't exist?" Jared hazarded.

Jensen made an impatient sound. "Why do you have this painting?" he clarified.

"Because I bought it?" Jared shoved his hair back with an impatient hand. "Honestly, Jensen, I don't know what you want me to say here. I just like dragons, okay?"

Jensen's jaw tensed and Jared suppressed the urge to throw his arms up in sheer despair of ever figuring out what in Vente's name was going on.

"You have paintings all over the house," Jensen said after a moment. "Are they all supposed to be dragons?"

"Look, I know it's stupid," Jared said. "But I don't care if they're not real. There's something so powerful and mysterious and, and _amazing_ about them, I just..." He shook his head, words deserting him. "I just like them. So when I find a new painting, I buy it. "

Jensen snorted. "Right."

Jared frowned at him. "What? I'm old enough to act like an idiot if I want to."

Jensen rounded on him, eyes fury-bright. "You're a _mechanist_ ," he growled, harsh enough to make Jared flinch. "Why in the stars are you pretending to be interested in some imaginary flying beasts when your head is too full of gears and steam and fucking progress to care about anything real?"

Jared blinked at him, stunned by the sudden vehemence.

"Well?" Jensen demanded, stepping forward and shoving Jared hard enough to send him stumbling back into the arm of the couch. 

"Jensen," Jared said, feeling his way very carefully. "Being a mechanist doesn't mean I don't care about other things."

Jensen's dark scowl didn't falter and Jared struggled for a way to make things better. 

"Look at me, Jensen. I own a _farm_. You really think I think steam power's the only important thing in the world? Just because my inventions are made out of copper and leather doesn't mean they're all that different from growing vegetables. It's all creation."

Jensen said nothing for a long moment, eyes never leaving Jared's face. Jared looked right back at him with as much openness as he could muster. 

"You're serious," Jensen said finally.

Just as slowly, Jared nodded. "Yeah."

"Fine," Jensen said, and Jared blinked.

"Oh. Um, good?" he tried, and figured the worst was over when Jensen neither left the room nor hauled off and punched him. Jensen's gaze went measuring and Jared shifted, feeling suddenly awkward. "Right, so. I'm going to, um. Make lunch, I guess. You hungry?"

"...okay."

Jared breathed a quiet sigh. "Great," he said, and was halfway to the door when Jensen's voice stopped him.

"Hey," Jensen said, and Jared twisted round to look at him. Jensen was back to staring at the painting with faraway eyes. Jared wondered what he was seeing. "Which one's your favourite?"

"The one in the bedroom," Jared answered without hesitation. "The blue one with the wings big enough protect my whole house."

Jensen cocked his head at him. "Or destroy it."

"Or destroy it," Jared agreed. He laughed a little. "Probably eat me as soon as look at me. But I'd like to think they're maybe a little nicer than that."

Jensen's mouth quirked with a secret sort of amusement. "Well, they're your imaginary pets, so I guess you can think what you want."

"Honestly?" Jared said, returning the almost-grin with a relieved one of his own. "I think a dragon would make a lousy pet."

Which made Jensen out and out laugh and Jared couldn't have helped the warm little curl of contentment that sound lit in his heart if he'd tried.

He was in so far over his head. And the worst part was that he couldn't quite bring himself to care.

Things went pretty much back to normal after that. Jensen kept helping Jared in the fields and spending most of the afternoon curled up with a book, though the supply of books he hadn't already read was starting to dwindle alarmingly. Jared kept them both fed and stayed up late drafting increasingly elaborate plans for his boots.

The biggest change was that Jared started spending time in his workshop again. The only conversation they'd had on the issue had basically consisted of Jensen telling Jared he was being a moron and shoving him out the door with instructions to get over himself already. And Jared might have resented that, but he knew that it was just Jensen's charming personality at work and he wasn't about to turn down the offer.

So Jared added another element to his day. He still read and talked with Jensen in the afternoon, but he escaped to his workshop every day after dinner. The sheets and sheets worth of plans he'd drawn up for his power boots turned into blueprints for a new project, one that was far more taxing than he'd expected. It was exhilarating, challenging and time-consuming, and Jared found himself working long into the nights, lamplight burning his eyes as he focused on the precise placement of copper wires and tiny gears. 

Jensen never asked what Jared was doing, even when Jared was nearly falling asleep in the potato field after forgetting to go to bed the night before. Which was unsurprising, given Jensen's clearly scathing opinion of tech, but Jared couldn't help but feel a little disheartened by the fact that he was building something complex and frustrating and fantastic for the first time in years and he had to bite back his enthusiasm every time he went to talk about the progress he'd been making. 

It definitely added a stilted sort of awkwardness to their conversations around the kitchen table, but the rest of the time they did a decent job of ignoring the whole issue. Jensen gave the workshop a wide berth and Jared focused on his slowly progressing boots in an attempt to distract himself from the ever-growing fear that, one day, he'd get back up to the house and find out that Jensen was gone.

It hadn't been much of a concern in the first month or so: Jensen had been far too ill to think seriously of leaving. Their increased closeness in the time since then had helped Jensen learn to relax in Jared's presence and, Jared hoped, even trust him a little.

But there was no denying that Jensen was growing stronger every day. The last of his bandages had been removed and the skin underneath was shiny, pink and new. A steady diet had put some much-needed meat on Jensen's bones and the hours in the fields had tanned his skin and strengthened his muscles until he was nearly as fit as Jared.

For the first time, Jared was getting to see the man buried beneath all that suffering and it made things both better and worse because Jensen was kind of ridiculously gorgeous. Jared had already admired Jensen for his courage and liked him for his quick wit and quiet company, and now he found himself uncomfortably aware of just how much he'd like get his hands on all that pale skin and kiss the hurt right out of that too-serious mouth.

Jensen hadn't noticed, which Jared was glad of. The last thing Jared wanted was for Jensen to think that he was expecting something in return for his help and Jared would have to be the worst kind of fool to hope that Jensen would decide to stay with him if he knew the truth. Luckily, Jensen had so many better things to be worrying about than the too-tall mechanist-turned-farmer who was kind of in love with him. 

The stress had Jared spending even more time in his workshop, pouring his frustrations into making the best damn pair of boots in the history of mankind. The extra effort invariably left him a disgusting, grubby mess at the end of every day and Jared started making a habit of drawing himself a bath before heading back up to the house, both to keep from making a disastrous mess and to save himself the dark anger in Jensen's eyes when they lingered on the grease smears on Jared's knuckles.

One day, after a particularly exasperating fight with a length of leather binding, Jared gave in early and trudged to the bathing room with the sun still hanging a goodly distance above the horizon. He didn't think anything of light glinting through the half-open door as he pushed it open, then immediately froze when he realized that he wasn't alone.

Jensen's eyes were closed, his ubiquitous glasses folded neatly on top of the stack of his clothes and his head tipped back against the rim of the tub. The heat of the water had brought a flush to his skin and the rising steam made everything about him look hazy and indistinct. The curl of his mouth looked almost contented, relaxing his face in a way that not even sleep could manage. He gave no sign that he'd heard Jared enter and Jared lingered guiltily in the doorway, too caught up by a sudden overwhelming surge of desire to back out like he should.

Jared didn't know how long he stood there, eyes trained on the sweat beading on Jensen's upper lip, the graceful fall of his eyelashes across tanned cheeks. Eventually though, Jensen sighed and stirred, water sluicing down his arms as he sat up to reach for the washcloth draped over the side of the tub. He leaned forward and Jared's breath caught abruptly as the light fell on Jensen's back, edging the unexpected shapes there in glistening gold.

Wings. Or, the shape of wings, etched in inky blue-black from Jensen's collarbone to his waist. The lines were long and graceful, tracing in wide, arching swaths that tapered into delicate tips with clockwork precision. Jared wasn't even quite sure what made him so certain they were wings - the pattern was more whorls and lines than anything else - but it was impossible to ignore now that he'd seen it. A vague memory of seeing dark bruises on Jensen's back that first day wormed its way to the front of his mind and Jared wondered if the desire to hide this mark was part of the reason why Jensen had never let him help change his bandages.

Jared shifted on the spot and Jensen stilled immediately. "That had better be you, Jared," he growled, not turning around. 

"Sorry," Jared blurted, backing up a step. Jensen said nothing, back still firmly turned, and Jared felt abruptly ashamed when his eyes still dropped to the stunning tattoo despite his best efforts. "I didn't mean to…" he started.

Then he fled.

Jared spent the next half hour pacing in his workshop before warily returning to the bathing room. Jensen was long gone, of course, but Jared still couldn't help the heat rising in his cheeks at the memory of what Jensen had looked like surrounded by water and light. Jared bathed quickly, scrubbing the grease and soot off his skin with fierce, heavy strokes. Then he took several deep, fortifying breaths and made his way up to the house.

Jensen was waiting for him on the veranda.

"I'm sorry," Jared said immediately. "I was coming to get cleaned up and then I..."

"Saw my wings and got distracted," Jensen finished. He stood, a head taller than Jared thanks to the added height of the veranda. "Come on."

"Jensen, I-" Jared started and Jensen pinned him with a glare.

"Come. On."

Chastened, Jared followed Jensen into the house and up the stairs. He faltered when Jensen headed for the bedroom, but Jensen's stride didn't hitch and, left without a better option, Jared trailed along after him.

"Sit," Jensen directed and Jared sank down on the edge of the bed like his strings had been cut. Jensen stayed standing, that familiar assessing look in his eyes that Jared had pretty much given up trying to understand. Jared waited quietly, feeling like a child about to be scolded by its mother.

Jensen abruptly reached for the laces at his own throat, deft fingers quick and sure as they pulled open his collar.

"Jensen?" Jared asked. "Wha-"

"Anyone ever tell you you talk too much?" Jensen asked and Jared could have sworn there was amusement in there somewhere.

Which gave him the courage to answer with a weak smile and an, "All the time. What are you doing?"

"I would have thought that was fairly obvious." Jensen pulled free the last of the laces and shrugged out of his shirt. It fell in a pool of fabric at his feet and Jared stared at the pockmarks scattered across his pale chest, so much fainter and fewer than they had been.

And then Jensen was turning to face the wall and Jared was left staring at the massive tattoo sprawled across Jensen's back. It was just as striking now as it had been the first time and like nothing Jared had ever seen before; Jared wondered what it meant.

"It's a clan marker," Jensen said, echoing Jared's thoughts so neatly that Jared wondered if he'd spoken aloud. "The sign of my tribe."

Jared bit his lip to keep from asking the obvious question and tried for something a little less invasive. "So it's a coming of age thing?"

Jensen's shoulders raised and fell in a shrug that wasn't quite casual. "You could say that."

"Didn't it hurt?" Jared couldn't help but ask.

Jensen tilted his head to fix Jared with a mordant look. "I've had worse."

"Oh." Jared felt his face heat. "Right. Sorry."

They stayed frozen like that for a long while and Jared took the opportunity to trace every inch of those swirling lines with his eyes.

"Can I touch them?" 

The words were out before Jared had realized he was going to say anything and Jensen's eyebrows climbed up right to his hairline.

"Sorry!" Jared said, half-rising. "I'll just-"

Jensen was at Jared's side before he'd managed to gain his feet and he pressed one hand down on Jared's shoulder, thwarting his escape.

"You apologize too much," Jensen said and he sounded amused, for him. "You'll know when you do something I don't want."

Jared kept his eyes fixed on the firm curve of Jensen's bare stomach, not sure what the right thing to say was here. "So-"

Jensen sighed somewhere above him. "Strange, stubborn man," he said, and then he was sitting down on the bed next to Jared, one leg tucked up under him and his back turned once again. 

"Well?" Jensen demanded, after Jared did nothing more productive than stare at him. "I'm not going to eat you."

And something about that struck Jared as ridiculously funny. "Well, that's a relief," he said, chuckling lightly. "I'd be pretty worried if your tattoo could eat people." Jensen snorted, shoulders rolling in a _get on with it_ sort of way, and Jared reached out with one slightly shaky hand to press his fingers to the not-quite even skin of Jensen's back.

Jensen's breath went shallow at the touch but he didn't tell Jared to stop. Jared pressed more firmly, feeling the heady warmth of Jensen's skin soaking into his palm. The tattoo looked even darker against Jared's tanned fingers and Jared gave in to the temptation to trace the outer lines, trying to feel the split between skin and ink. He couldn't find one, but he was too busy being fascinated by the complex swirl of black spilling across Jensen's back to be disappointed. 

Jensen was still and silent under his fingers, letting Jared touch, and Jared swallowed hard at the intimacy of the moment.

"Thank you," he said into the stillness. _For trusting me with this._

"I like that better than all the apologies," Jensen said and Jared was smiling as he let his hand trail down to Jensen's waist, following those inky trails until long after the sun had gone down.

"So," Jared said a few days later. "I'm going to Yousil at the end of the week."

Jensen froze with his spoon halfway to his mouth. "You are."

Jared nodded awkwardly. "For the, um, World Expo. It's a competition for amateur mechanists," he added, at Jensen's blank look. When a scowl flickered immediately across Jensen's face, Jared kind of wished he'd stayed quiet.

"I wasn't aware you were an amateur," Jensen said after a moment.

Jared felt the tips of his ears heat. "Oh, um, not really, I guess, but I'm not employed by any major company, so I still count."

Jensen made a noncommittal sound and returned his attention to his soup.

"You can come if y-" Jared started, only to falter when he caught sight of the glare Jensen was leveling at him. He coughed and tried again. "You can stay here while I'm gone, if you want. I'll go into Trescid and pick up supplies before I go, because if you're anywhere as sick of vegetables as I am, it's gotta be-"

"How long?" Jensen interrupted, as though Jared hadn't spoken all at.

Jared rolled his eyes. "We really need to work on your manners. I'll be gone for about a fortnight. I can catch the train in Bryn, but it'll still take a good three days to get there. The Expo's on for a week."

Jensen nodded and stood "Fine. Great." 

Jared watched him turn and head for the stairs, as sure a sign as Jared needed to know that Jensen didn't want to be kept company this evening.

"Jensen?" Jared asked tentatively. Jensen's eyes swung towards him and Jared swallowed down the nervous flutter in his gut. "Will you... still be here when I get back?"

Jensen stared at him for a long moment and Jared wondered, as he always did, just what Jensen was looking for. "I will," Jensen said finally, in a voice so low that Jared nearly missed it.

"Good," Jared said, with a relieved grin. "That's... good. I'm glad."

Jensen's mouth crooked. "I can't imagine why," he said, and disappeared up the stairs before Jared could figure out a response to that.

Jared's next trip into town was quite possibly the most awkward experience he'd had in his life. Considering what he'd been like as a teenager, that was saying a lot.

"Well hello there, stranger," Genevieve drawled as he approached her stall. "Long time no see."

Jared grinned at her. "So everyone keeps telling me. I hope you've been well?"

She shrugged. "Well enough." Her expression went keen. "So, where have you been? We were all starting to think you'd moved away or something."

"Oh, nothing like that." Jared pulled on a sheepish face, doing his best to sound casual when he said, "My sister had a baby so I took some time to go visit her."

Genevieve arched an eyebrow. "I didn't know you had a sister."

Jared shrugged. "We don't always get along so well and she's out in Lothly, so."

"Huh," Genevieve said, and she didn't sound particularly convinced. No one else had, either. "I'm surprised you left your farm in the middle of the harvest season. How are you going to afford to feed yourself all winter?"

"Carefully," Jared said, with an attempt at a cheeky grin. "So," he said then, desperate to get off the subject. "What's been going on round here? Anything new and exciting?"

"Not really," Genevieve said after a moment, and Jared knew right away that she was lying. Worse, he'd heard the same lie from every shopkeeper he'd visited so far. "You know nothing ever changes round here."

Jared hummed noncommittally. "The joys of country life, I guess," he said and turned the conversation towards safer things. He concluded his business as quickly as he could without being rude, well past ready to get out town.

"You should come over for dinner," Genevieve said as Jared packed up his purchases. It didn't sound much like a suggestion.

"Can I take a rain check?" Jared asked, doing his best to sound casual. "I've got a lot of work to do to get the farm back in shape right now."

"I'd _really_ like it if you came," Genevieve persisted, and Jared would have found it strange even if he hadn't already received essentially the same invitation today from several different people whom he hardly knew. 

"Maybe next time," Jared said, and beat a hasty retreat before she could pursue the matter.

Jared finished the rest of his errands as hurriedly as possible, uncomfortably aware of the fact that he wasn't imagining all the extra attention he was receiving. He'd been greeted by more people on the walk between the mill and Chad's butchery than he'd usually talk to in a year and it wasn't hard to tell that these people weren't at all interested in anything he said.

The part that really worried him was that he didn't know what they _were_ interested in.

Jared had no sooner finished shopping than he was heading out of town, pleading fatigue in the face of the solicitous concern of what felt like half the village. Some vaguely hysterical part of him couldn't help but be relieved when no one went so far as to follow his wagon, but he figured it couldn't be long before someone found an excuse to head out to the farm to 'visit'. And Jared couldn't risk that, not when it might put Jensen in danger. 

Jared's brain was a muddle of worry for the entire trip, though he did his best to plaster on a good humour for Jensen's sake. The arched eyebrow Jensen gave him when he started unpacking foodstuffs suggested that he'd done a particularly poor job of it, but Jared had almost expected that Jensen would see right through him. For someone who'd known him for less than a season, Jensen was well on his way to being an expert in all things Jared.

Jared managed to keep his thoughts to himself until after dinner.

"I think you might need to leave," he blurted, and winced when Jensen's expression went flat. "Sorry, that's not what... I don't _want_ you to leave, Jensen."

"But?" Jensen prompted, relaxing a little.

Jared huffed out a breath. "But I think I've made people a little too curious about why I haven't been into town in so long. I'm probably going to get all sorts of 'surprise' visitors in the next couple of weeks." He looked at Jensen somberly. "I don't want anyone to be able to lead those men to you."

Jensen cocked his head. "You really mean that."

"Well, yeah," Jared said, confused. "Of course."

"You are the strangest human I've ever met," Jensen said, and there was something fond and thoughtful in his tone that made Jared's stupid heart jump. "So you think that everyone in town has missed you so much that seeing you today is going to convince them all to see you when they didn't care enough beforehand?"

"Hey," Jared protested mildly. "Lots of people care about me. I'll have you know that I got asked to the last village social by three different boys."

"I'm sure," Jensen said, dry as dust.

Jared made a face at him. "Oh, shut up. It was just... weird. I mean, if people were that worried, you'd think someone would have come out by now, right? It's not like I'm hard to find. But I got, like, a dozen invitations to dinner today and a couple people asking if I wanted some help getting the farm fixed up. Which seems, well, weird."

Jensen propped his chin in his hand. "Your command of the English language is simply astounding."

"That is not shutting up. Are you sure _you_ understand English?" Jared sobered, trying to keep the ache out of his voice as he said, "There's something wrong. It's not safe for you here anymore. And I want you to stay but-"

"Quiet," Jensen said absently. "I'm trying to think."

"Yes, sir," Jared muttered, though he fell silent while Jensen thought about whatever he was thinking about. He fiddled absently with a mechanical butterfly he'd made in his workroom upstairs the last time he couldn't sleep. The wings flapped in a graceful ripple of canvas and Jared wondered how much energy it would take to make it fly.

"I'm going with you to the Expo," Jensen said suddenly, which was pretty high up there on the list of things Jared hadn't expected him to say.

"What? Why? Not that you can't," Jared added hurriedly. "But it's in Yousil; it's dangerous for you in the city, right? That's why you didn't want to come."

Jensen shrugged. "I'll deal with it." 

"Jensen. If you need to leave, then leave. I don't," Jared took a fortifying breath, "I don't want you getting hurt."

"I'm going with you," Jensen repeated, in exactly the same tone of voice.

Jared made a face. "Did you listen to a word I just said?"

"Of course. I just don't care what you think."

"Vente, you're an asshole," Jared said, with a heavy sigh. "You were so much easier to deal with when you were bleeding half to death."

Something unpleasant flashed across Jensen's face and Jared forced himself to keep his tone light when he said, "Do you want me to start apologizing again? Because I can do that if you're too sensitive to handle a little teasing."

"Clearly I'm not the only asshole around here," Jensen said, the shadow around his eyes fading slightly. He stood then, rolling back his shoulders once before heading for the door. Jared sat there, watching him go, and Jensen paused to throw Jared a look over his shoulder. "I'm still coming, whether you like it or not."

"Any chance you're going to tell me why?" Jared asked and had to figure himself for kind of an idiot when Jensen's unrepentant little smirk made him want to swoon just a little.

"Not much of a chance, no," Jensen said. "Better get used to it."

Jensen left the room and all Jared could do was hope that he really would have the chance to do just that.

They left on a bright, cheery morning, Jensen perched on the bench at Jared's side and Jared's mechanical boots tucked neatly away in a crate in the back of the wagon. The weather was decently warm, though the occasional crisp edge on the wind said that autumn wasn't all that far off.

The trip to Bryn was entirely uneventful, thankfully, and Jared negotiated stabling for his horse and wagon before leading the way to the train station. The look on Jensen's face when he saw the train was more than a little amusing.

"I hate you," Jensen said, as they settled themselves in their seats, Jared's luggage and boxed-up boots sitting on the floor between them.

"It was your idea to come," Jared pointed out.

Jensen opened his mouth to retort, only to snap it shut again when the train chose that moment to roll into motion. His entire body went stiff as a board and he clenched his hands in the fabric of his trousers until his knuckles were white. 

Jared rolled his eyes and reached out, settling a light hand on Jensen's arm.

"Hey," he said, and he had a smile ready when Jensen's eyes fixed on him with lightning-sharp concentration. "You're making _me_ nervous, you're worrying so hard. Chill out a little, okay? It's perfectly safe."

Jensen shot him a haughty little look. "I know that. I'm fine."

Jared patted him on the hand. "Of course you are."

And Jensen proceeded to glare at him for a solid hour, but Jared figured it was totally worth it. The more time Jensen spent being irritated with Jared, the less time he spent worrying about the train, after all.

They spent a full two days on the train and Jared was reminded of why he hated sleeping in moving vehicles: they just weren't built for people his size. Jensen was jittery and nervous the entire time, though to a much lesser degree than he had been to begin with. Aware that Jensen had plenty for reasons for feeling that way, Jared did his best to act as a buffer between Jensen and the rest of the people on the train.

Their debarkation at Yousil was a chaotic mess of noise and steam that had Jensen hovering so close to him that Jared was impressed that they didn't trip over each other's feet. Jared suppressed the impulse to take Jensen's hand as he hoisted his crate and shoved through the crowd towards the aerial lift platform.

There was the usual swarm of people waiting at the platform. Jared bought their tickets and shuffled Jensen into line.

"Another train?" Jensen asked with a pained expression.

Jared grinned at him. "Not exactly."

One of the aerial cars arrived in a rush of steam and hydraulics and Jensen jumped, the beginning of panic written in every line of his body. 

Jared felt a pang of guilt. "Sorry," he said, doing his best to keep his voice down and still be heard over the noise of people disembarking and a new group climbing aboard. "I should have warned you."

"You think? What _is_ that thing?"

"Aerial lift," Jared told him and pointed up at the massive steel cables supporting the weight of the car. "Runs on suspension cables between here and Yousil."

The line shifted forward and Jensen craned his neck to get a better look as the full car started pulling away. "Aerial, huh? Why don't they use a road like normal p-"

Jensen's voice trailed off and Jared glanced over to find Jensen staring out after the car in slack surprise.

"Because Yousil's not exactly accessible by land," Jared said, more than a little redundantly at this point.

Jensen nodded faintly. "I can see that."

Jared grinned and peered out at Yousil with him.

The city itself was only barely visible at this distance, little more than a cloud of smoke and steam at the top of a high, inhospitable-looking mass of slate-gray rock. Jared rather doubted that that was what had caught Jensen's attention though.

"Why," Jensen asked, staring at the massive swath of open sky stretching out between them and Yousil. "Would someone build a city on a mountain in the middle of a crater?"

Jared shrugged. "Resources." 

Jensen glanced at him, one eyebrow cocked, and Jared explained further.

"This area's got a lot of coal deposits in the earth and the stone's good quality. The crater's mostly because of digging. See the conveyors?" Jared asked, pointing at the series of flat barges making their slow way along the far side of the crater. "They transport the coal from the mines up to the refinery on the other side of the city."

"So they built a city that runs on fire and steam in the middle of a coal mine," Jensen said. "That sounds like a _stunning_ plan."

"There are a lot of security measures in place. And it means that Yousil doesn't have to worry as much about being attacked by foreign armies so there's plenty of time for other pursuits. There's a reason they hold the World Expo here every year."

Jensen made a thoughtful noise and then didn't say anything more until after they'd boarded the aerial lift and started the slow trip across the Yousil Chasm.

Jared had been expecting Jensen to be twice as uptight about relying on mechanics when suspended miles above the ground as he had been on the train, but Jensen apparently lived to surprise him. Jared watched with mild concern as Jensen leaned out over the side of the car without any apparent regard for his own mortality, chest pressed close to the railing and one hand hooked loosely around one of the ceiling supports. 

"Please don't fall off," Jared said to him and Jensen actually laughed, an exhilarated, wild sound that made Jared feel like falling out of the car might not be so bad after all if he was falling with this man.

It was going to break his heart when Jensen left.

"I won't," Jensen promised, and it took Jared a moment to remember what Jensen was responding to. "So," Jensen said then. "Are these aerial lifts of yours the only way to get into the city?"

"Sort of." Jared leaned on the railing next to Jensen, gripping tightly onto the chill metal. "There are seven gates in the wall: one for the aerial lift and the others for airships. Yousil's famous for its aeronautics. There's one over there, see?"

Jensen looked at the airship, head cocked to the side like a curious bird. "It's not very fast," he noted critically.

Jared laughed. "Well, they fly faster than me, so I guess they'll have to do."

The car drew ever closer to the city and it wasn't long before Jared could pick out the point where the mountain stopped and the city walls began. The tops of buildings peeked over the top of the massive edifice, wrapped in the permanent swirl of nearly-white smoke that hovered over the city.

The copper gate gleamed like fire in the light of the sun and Jared felt the same wondrous awe he always did as their tiny car passed through that massive space. He could taste the oily tang of grease on the air even before they climbed out of the cable car and was surprised to discover that he'd missed that sensation. The chunking whir of gears followed them out of the station and onto the street, as regular and familiar as the beating of Jared's own heart.

Jared turned to grin at Jensen but his elation died when he caught sight of the expression on Jensen's face. 

"Jensen?" he asked.

Jensen acted like he hadn't heard him, radiating hurt and anger strongly enough to take Jared's breath away.

"Jensen?" he tried again, carefully not coming any closer. "Everything okay?"

"No," Jensen said faintly, then caught himself. "Yes. It's fine." The tightness in him shifted to something less intense but no less frightening. "I'm fine. Where are we going?"

"...the inn," Jared said, after a moment. "We'll get settled in and then decide what to do with the rest of the day. The Expo doesn't open until tomorrow, so we've got plenty of time."

Jensen nodded. "Fine, good. Lead the way."

Giving a nod of his own, Jared gathered up his belongings and set out. Jensen trailed along wordlessly and Jared filled the silence between them by pointing out different parts of the city as they passed, from the Aeronaut Academy and the central clock tower to the automated lifts that climbed up the sides of the taller buildings.

"You know a lot about this city," Jensen noted in the middle of Jared's monologue about the use of non-regulated steam temperature in the fountain in Riaci Square. 

Jared shrugged as best as he was able to while carrying his bag and a crate full of very heavy metal. "Well, I grew up here, so it'd be pretty poor if I didn't remember at least some of it."

There was no reply and Jared glanced back to find Jensen standing a few paces back, surprise evident on his face.

He slowed. "Something wrong?"

Jensen shook his head and propelled himself back into motion. "It's nothing."

Jared rolled his eyes. "You can ask me, you know. It's not like it's a big dark secret."

The moment the words were out of his mouth he wanted to flinch, but if Jensen caught the unintended insinuation, he didn't give any indication of it.

"You grew up here," Jensen said and Jared nodded. Jensen huffed out a resigned sort of laugh. "I guess that explains why you're a mechanist." 

"Yeah, probably," Jared agreed. "I think I'd still love it either way, but it'd have been hard to get a chance to study mechanism if I'd lived in the country my whole life."

"Why did you leave then?" Jensen asked and Jared shrugged again.

"Mostly it was because I didn't think I belonged here." Jared glanced around, taking in the once-familiar mix of steam and whirring gears and faceless crowds. "It's hard to think in the city, sometimes. And I might be a mechanist, but I don't think that technology should try to replace everything else. It can work with nature as well as in spite of it."

Jared caught Jensen nodding out of the corner of his eye, though whether it was in agreement or in response to something else entirely, Jared didn't know.

Jared coughed. "Come on. The inn's just ahead."

"Wait," Jensen said, falling in step beside Jared. "If you grew up here, shouldn't you be staying with your family?"

Jared shook his head. "They wouldn't want to see me. I'm kind of a disappointment. And they don't live here anymore, anyways."

This time, Jensen's silence was thoughtful. Jared was relieved when he let the subject drop.

Jared got them checked into the room he'd booked, using his charming personality and a hefty tip to get the man at the desk to switch his single for a double. He just hoped that Jensen wouldn't be too uncomfortable about sharing the room itself.

Jensen didn't say anything about the sleeping arrangements, just settled himself down on the bed closest to the door and stared at Jared.

Jared set his things carefully on the floor, groaning with relief as his muscles relaxed. Jensen kept staring at him. Jared glanced at Jensen. "That's a little creepy, you know."

"I do know," Jensen agreed. He raised one eyebrow, as if daring Jared to make him stop.

Jared sighed and walked over to flop down on the other bed. "I was supposed to go to the Aeronaut Academy," he said, eyes fixed on one of the copper pipes snaking its way along the ceiling. "Become an aeromechanist, bring prestige to the family name, solve world hunger, yadda yadda yadda. I had two apprenticeships under my belt and the skills to get in, and my father had the connections to make it happen."

"Why didn't you?" Jensen asked quietly.

"I didn't want to." Jared laughed self-deprecatingly. "Vente, it sounds so childish now. But I wasn't interested in building airships and I didn't want to be forced to make things I didn't want to. My dad was furious. Sometimes, I'm surprised he didn't disown me."

"But you said you made a living as a mechanist."

Jared nodded. "Had to pay the bills somehow, right? It was never anything exciting, small jobs here and there, but it was better than nothing. And then-" Jared took a steadying breath. "Then my mother died."

Jensen stilled. "Jared-"

"She was sick," Jared continued, pushing the words out fast so he couldn't even think of trying to hold them in. "Weak lungs. Not easy to take care of in the middle of the city. Too much smog. I told Dad to use my academy money to pay for doctors. I think it's probably the only time we ever agreed with each other. Not that it did any good." 

Jensen was silent but Jared could feel his eyes, unwavering and nonjudgmental.

Jared kept going, hurrying to get to the end of the story. "Neither of us really wanted to deal with each other after that. Dad started signing on to longer and longer flights until he was away more often than he was home. He sold the house eventually. Gave me the share that would have been my inheritance and told me to go make something of myself." Jared smiled a little. "Somehow I don't think growing vegetables and building irrigation bots was quite what he had in mind."

"Then why come back at all?" Jensen asked.

Jared's shrug was impeded by the way he was splayed bodily across the mattress, but he figured Jensen got the gist. "It was a long time ago. Hardly worth remembering now but I guess I want to prove to myself that the things I make are worth something. Even if I'm not the kind of mechanist my dad wanted me to be."

"Do you know why I asked you for help?" Jensen asked suddenly, and Jared raised his head to stare at him, not sure where that had come from. "That day in the village."

"Why?" Jared asked, hushed.

"The way you spoke to that boy," Jensen said and, for the life of him, Jared couldn't remember what boy he was talking about. "In a town full of people I couldn't trust, you were the only one I thought might be willing to help." He met Jared's gaze steadily. "You're a good man, Jared. And that makes you the only kind of mechanist worth having."

Jared blinked, swallowing hard. "That's, I- thank you. That means a lot to me."

Jensen shrugged. "It's only the truth," he said and didn't say anything else for the rest of the night.

Jensen was still in bed when Jared left the inn the next morning, looking loose-limbed and strangely young amid a mess of kicked-off sheets. While Jared was surprised to see Jensen sleeping so late, he couldn't help but be a little relieved that he wouldn't have to invite Jensen to come with him, and then pretend he didn't mind when Jensen said no.

The early morning air was muggy and dense as Jared stepped outside. The wispy drift of smoke down the crowded streets turned the walls and cobblestones to gold in the light of dawn. Normally, Jared would have lingered for a time, drinking in the casual beauty of the morning, but the combined incentive of needing to be somewhere on time and carrying a box full of rather heavy metal had him walking briskly to the Expo Centre instead.

The Expo Centre was one of the more famous buildings in Yousil. Long and wide, it took up a full city block not far from the main core of the city. The exterior walls had been sheathed in well-polished copper, which made the entire thing gleam like fire under the sun, and the massive glass dome above the atrium was visible even to airships approaching the city from the northern gates. The inside was a sprawling mass of seminar halls and special event rooms that spidered out around the great hall where the World Expo was always held.

Jared had spent a great deal of time in the Expo Centre over the years: attending the yearly Expos, first as a spectator and then, briefly, as a competitor; sitting in on lectures and live demonstrations; and, during his apprenticeships, actually leading some workshops of his own. There was a certain sense of coming home that followed him through the main doors - hydraulic, of course - and Jared couldn't help but feel a breath of excitement curling in him. 

The lineup at the registration desk was already long even at this time of the morning, and Jared shifted uncomfortably as he inched forward, wishing he'd thought to bring something with wheels to carry his boots on. He could already feel the slow burn spreading through his muscles from the strain and he cursed himself as a fool. 

The fact that he wasn't the only one in line who looked like his arms were about to fall off made him feel a little better.

When Jared finally reached the front of the line, he got handed a ridiculous amount of paperwork to fill in and a registration card with his entry number. The woman at the desk was kind and efficient and Jared gave her a grateful smile before heading through the squat, sturdy doors that led to the great hall. 

The great hall was a veritable riot of colour and sound. People from all corners of the world wandered through the long, jam-packed space, carrying inventions of all shapes and sizes and talking with each other about their work. The entry booths were set up in three long rows - against both walls and down the centre of the room - creating two main thoroughfares that would not look nearly so organized by the time the day was out, and Jared had to restrain himself from stopping to look at every booth between the door and his own little square of space. 

Jared's booth was two thirds of the way down against the right wall, between a long-haired guy in his late thirties and a stunning brunette only a few years older than Jared. After slumping down gratefully over his booth and rolling back his stiff shoulders a couple of times, Jared turned on his smile and introduced himself to the both of them.

Chris was a local boy, born and raised, and most of his family worked in the mining industry.

"S'why I made these," he told Jared, gesturing at a pair of heavy-looking gauntlets. "Damn sight easier for a miner when he can clear solid rock with his fists instead of lugging some fucking big machine down the tunnel to do it for him."

On the opposite end of the scale, Danneel was the daughter of the chief aeromechanist out in Lukly and she'd been showing up her classmates at the academy since she was old enough to solder wire.

"It's not entirely practical," she admitted, petting the mechanical dog sitting on her lap. "But I can't be the only who's ever wanted something to keep me company on long flights."

Both Chris and Danneel were duly impressed with Jared's boots and they all spent a pleasant half hour or so talking in detail about schematics, steam outputs and clockwork integrity. Eventually, though, Jared reached his limit of how long he could ignore his inner three-year old and excused himself from the conversation so he could go exploring. 

Jared wandered around the hall for well over an hour, stopping to look at absolutely everything and talking to absolutely anyone who would stay still long enough to talk back. It was chaotic, exhilarating and so far removed from his life on his farm that Jared almost felt like he'd traveled back to a time when all this had actually been his reality. He was ruefully unsurprised to see just how much more enjoyable it all seemed after so long without. 

He was in the middle of asking a short blonde girl what kind of gear system she'd used for her pressure clock when he felt someone stop right behind him rather than shifting with the flow of the crowd.

"Entrant 7614?"

"Yes, that's m-" Jared turned and faltered at the sight of two men dressed in distressingly familiar gray liveries.

"You need to come with us," the one on the left said, while Jared was still trying to get past his immediate reaction of 'oh, fuck' long enough to figure out what the hell he was going to do.

"Is there a problem?" Jared settled on, shifting onto the balls of his feet as he prepared to make a break for it.

"Just some quick questions," the same man said, while the other one not-so-casually shrugged his jacket aside and rested his hand on the handle of the aether pistol tucked into his belt. So no running, then.

Jared was apparently in a lot of trouble.

"Um," he said, trying to buy for time. "You know, I'm really not s-"

A hand closed around the back of his shirt and yanked, hard; Jared stumbled heavily and barely had time to catch the familiar glint of green-tinted glasses before he was being shoved into motion.

"Move!" Jensen ordered, and Jared's feet obeyed instantly. The rest of him was slower to get with the program, but he was already running through the crowd like Lentum's ravens were after him by the time his brain caught up so he figured it was probably a moot point, anyway.

"Jensen?" he demanded incredulously, narrowly avoiding colliding with a woman toting an inexplicably blue euphonic guitar. He could hear indignant shouts and the thud of colliding bodies behind them as the two men started shoving people out of their way to get through the crowd after them.

"Not now," Jensen said, snaking through the crowd like smoke.

"What? But, J-"

A pistol blast sizzled through the air, far too close for Jared's comfort. People started screaming and the entire aisle jammed up as people tried to figure out which way to run. Jared couldn't really blame them.

Jensen swore and veered to the left, angling them towards a tarnished, well-worn service door set into the side wall.

"We won't get in," Jared tried to tell him, pulse tripping erratically as they skidded to a stop. His eyes swung wildly around the room as he tried to figure out where the next threat might come from. "These doors literally weigh a ton and the security protoc-"

Jensen laid one shoulder against the door and _shoved_. The door buckled inward with a pained groan and Jensen was pulling him through before Jared had finished gaping.

"How, how did you-?"

"Not _now_ , Jared," Jensen gritted, pausing briefly to wedge the door unevenly back into its jamb. He glanced around the maintenance office they were in and angled his head towards the catwalk on the far side. "This way."

The catwalk led them straight through the main boiler room that provided steam to this wing of the building. Fire-hot metal towered around them, the constant churning of gears shuddering through the floor hard enough to make Jared's teeth rattle. 

The air was sweltering and thick. Jared was drenched in moments; sweat poured down his face like tears and his shirt clung damply to his back. A quick look at Jensen turned into a startled double take when Jared realized that Jensen didn't have so much as a sheen of sweat across his brow. A faint dusting of pink on his cheeks was the most concession Jensen's body was making to the heat and even that looked like it came more from the ruddy light around them than any suffering on Jensen's part.

A crash shuddered through the air and Jared chanced a glance back to see that the broken door had been forced open again and a crowd of gray-suited men were pushing their way through. Jared felt his stomach sink when realized that there were considerably more than two of them now.

"Jensen!" he called, and he had to fight to keep back the edge of hysteria that wanted to creep in. "Behind us!"

"I know. Follow me." 

They reached the end of the catwalk and Jensen wasted no time in shoving open the closest door and hauling Jared through. The air on the other side was blessedly cool and Jared sucked in a few deep, grateful breaths while Jensen forced the door back into place. 

"That won't stop them long," Jensen said. He glanced around the empty conference hall they were in and started towards the door. "We need to keep moving."

"Who are they?" Jared demanded, footsteps muffled by the thick carpet. "Why are they after you?"

"Technically, they're after you," Jensen told him, glancing back and forth down the hallway. "This way." 

"What?" Jared threw an incredulous look at Jensen and nearly tripped over his own feet in the process. "Why?"

Jensen shrugged. "They're hoping you can lead them to me."

Jared blinked. "But- you're right here!"

"And they'll have figured that out by now," Jensen agreed, which didn't make any sense whatsoever. Jensen turned right at the next hallway and Jared trailed along helplessly after. "Which is why we've got to get out of here before they catch us both."

"Who are they?" Jared tried again, because he was foolishly optimistic like that. "I know they're not prison guards."

"No," Jensen agreed. 

"So?"

"They work for the Metallurgy Guild," Jensen said finally, which was decidedly _not_ the answer Jared had been expecting.

"The-" Jared started, then yelped when Jensen grabbed him by the front of his shirt, manhandled him through an open door and shoved him up against a wall. Jared's breath left him in a whoosh and Jensen pressed in close, covering Jared's mouth with one hand.

"Quiet," he whispered and Jared managed most of a nod.

They stayed like that in silence and, as the minutes ticked by, Jared found himself growing increasingly discomfited by this new turn of events. Jensen was pressed up against him from shoulders to waist, holding him flush against the wall and positively radiating heat. His face was mere inches away from Jared's and Jared could make out the individual freckles scattered across the bridge of Jensen's nose. He felt a little thrill down his spine that could not have been more inappropriate right now and firmly told his body to stop that.

Jensen tilted his head, his breath gusting against Jared's neck in an incredibly distracting fashion, and Jared slammed his eyes shut in a desperate attempt to keep himself under control. After an interminably long time, Jensen relaxed his hold and Jared sucked in a relieved breath when Jensen's hand fell away from his mouth. 

Jensen listened for a moment longer, his expression distant, then nodded and stepped away. "We've got to hurry."

"You ever going to tell me what's going on?" Jared asked. Jensen glanced out the door and beckoned Jared to follow him, moving at a cautious pace that Jared couldn't help but appreciate; all this running was wearing him out. "Why is the Metallurgy Guild chasing you? With guns?"

Jensen was silent for a moment. "They want me back," he said finally, in a subdued voice that Jared had to strain to hear.

Jared frowned. "Back? Like, you worked for them?"

Jensen shot him a withering look. "Of course not, Jared, use your head."

Jared huffed at him. "You know, you're really not doing a very good job of helping me understand here, Jensen."

"I'm trying to keep you alive," Jensen said, in a tone so matter of fact that it made Jared's skin crawl. "You can understand things later."

"Okay," Jared said slowly. "But-"

Something solid and heavy slammed Jared into the wall, hard enough to crack his head against the tiles. Lights danced in Jared's vision and he stumbled, getting the vaguest glimpse of a burly man dressed in that same dark gray before a pair of massive hands locked around his throat and bore down hard.

"Fuck!" he swore, flailing out with his fists to try and shove his attacker away. Unfortunately, the man was even bigger than Jared and Jared's hands fell just short of the mark. He could just hear the sounds of a scuffle over the roar of blood in his ears, but the wide bulk of his attacker's shoulders kept him from seeing what was happening.

"Jens-!" he wheezed, simultaneously trying not to die and to make sure that Jensen was okay. His attacker didn't let up for an instant, the muscles in his arms carved in sharp relief to match the steadily dwindling supply of air reaching Jared's lungs.

"Jared!" Jensen shouted back, then hissed out a sharp breath that make Jared's pulse spike alarmingly. Something clattered to the floor in time with another flurry of rushing feet and Jared nearly finished himself off by straining instinctively forward against the chokehold he was in, trying to get closer.

Spots danced in front of his eyes, his vision graying at the edges, and Jared realized that he was going to die like this if he didn't find some way of getting this guy off him. He flung his arm out again, this time aiming for the pistol at his attacker's waist. Not realizing what Jared was doing, the guy grinned nastily at him and leaned in closer, putting a dangerous amount of pressure on Jared's throat.

Fighting not to choke on his own tongue, Jared strained even harder and felt a surge of adrenaline run through him when his fingers snagged on the hilt of the pistol. The guy faltered, belated realization skimming across his face, and Jared pulled the pistol free with clumsy fingers, aiming to hopefully-not-kill.

The bolt caught the guy right under the ribs and Jared coughed around a mouthful of air as the grip around his throat went suddenly slack. The guy hit the floor like a sack of potatoes and Jared mouthed an apologetic 'sorry!' at him before stepping over him to go help Jensen.

There were three men facing off against Jensen and another half dozen of their colleagues splayed out across the floor. Jensen's glasses were gone and there was a jagged gash running across the top of his nose and down under one eye. One of his arms was hanging awkwardly at his side and Jared desperately hoped that it was the result of pain rather than an actual break.

One of the men lunged at Jensen and Jared reacted instinctively: he let fly a shot that clipped the guy's shoulder, then charged in and cold-cocked him to make sure he was out for the count. Jensen had the other two down almost before the first one hit the floor. 

"Hey," Jared said, with a decent attempt at a grin. "No fair leaving me out."

"Don't take so long next time," Jensen shot back, eyes flicking down and away before Jared could catch a good look at his expression.

"You okay?" Jared asked him.

"Fine," Jensen said, swiping at the blood on his face and leaving red smears on the back of his hand. Jared took a moment to be horrified by how close Jensen had come to losing an eye. "Let's go."

"You know," Jared said, as Jensen upped their speed to a quick jog without bothering to check if Jared was keeping up. "That's not exactly the look I picture when I hear the word 'fine'."

"It's nothing serious." 

Jared shook his head in mock despair. "And after I spent so much time putting you back together."

The corner of Jensen's mouth twitched slightly. "Maybe if you hadn't done such a good job, I wouldn't be here to get attacked in the first place." 

"Why _did_ you come here?" Jared couldn't help but ask. "If you knew they were waiting for you in the cities, shouldn't you have-"

"They're not."

"…What?"

Jared would have thought it would be difficult to sigh impatiently while running around through hostile territory, but Jensen managed it just fine. "They're not here on the off chance that I might fancy a wander around the World Expo. They came because they knew you were going to be here."

"You keep saying that," Jared said. "Why are you so convinced they're following me?"

"Because they don't know what I look like right now," Jensen said, as though that explained everything. "And you were suspicious enough to catch their attention."

"I was? How?"

Jensen tugged open another door, poked his head through, then beckoned Jared to follow. "Trescid. The Guild must have put out a reward for information about anyone who'd taken a sudden, conspicuous leave of absence from their daily routine. You don't go into the village for the better part of a season then show up again out of the blue? Not exactly subtle if you know what to look for." He shrugged. "After they realized you'd come here for the Expo, all they had to do was follow you."

"Wait," Jared said, a sick feeling rising up in his gut. "You think someone from town sold me out? Seriously?"

Jensen nodded. He veered down another hallway nearly identical to the last and Jared heard the faintest strands of voices somewhere in the distance; they were circling back around to the great hall. "I'm told that people will do a lot of things for money." Jensen hesitated for a moment and, when he continued, his tone was sober. "They've probably ransacked the farm already. I'm sorry."

"The-" Jared's head was spinning. Those men had been at _his farm_. Someone he _knew_ had told them where to find him and they had come looking and- 

"Wait," Jared said, realization sitting heavy in his gut. "That's why you decided to come with me to the Expo. You knew they'd be after me." 

Jensen was damningly silent and Jared felt fury rise high and fast in his veins. 

He seized Jensen by the arm and dragged him to a halt, practically vibrating with anger. "You should have left!" he shouted at Jensen's back, the words coming out harsh and far too loud. "I _told_ you to leave! They're, Vente, Jensen, they're going to catch you, and it's all my... why the _hell_ didn't you run?"

"Run?" Jensen asked, in a deadly flat voice. He kept his eyes fixed somewhere on the far wall, refusing to turn and face Jared. "And leave you for them to find? Let you get tortured for information you couldn't give? Let you die for no good reason besides being too good a man to let someone else suffer?" Jensen's voice dropped to a whisper. "I couldn't do that."

Something like hope fought through the rage burning in Jared's brain. "Why not?" he asked.

Jensen said nothing. 

"Jensen." Jared tightened his grip on Jensen's arm. "Why. Not?"

Jensen whirled to face him and Jared had less than a moment to realize what was happening before Jensen was arching up and kissing him like he'd never get another chance. Jared's body got with the program immediately, for which his brain was profusely thankful, and he cupped Jensen's cheek with one hand and kissed back, pouring everything he had into it. Jensen's kiss was artless and honest, more enthusiastic than talented and filled with so much emotion it sent Jared's head swirling. His thumb brushed absently through the blood drying on Jensen's face, the touch as gentle as Jared knew how to make it.

"Stupid, stubborn man," Jensen breathed against Jared's lips, just as much of an endearment as it'd been the last time he'd said it. He shifted back and Jared found himself staring into eyes that were as green as the forest even without the protective shield of his tinted glasses. "You have no idea how worth coveting you are."

Jensen's body snapped abruptly taut while Jared was trying to figure out what to say to that and those amazing, impossible eyes cut to something over Jared's shoulder. 

"We've got to go," Jensen said, and grabbed Jared by the wrist. Jared stumbled along after him with his emotions skittering all over the map.

"They're after my scales," Jensen said as they ran, throwing open doors and charging through hallways without the slightest regard for the amount of noise they were making. He careered around a corner without slowing and Jared had to slap his free hand against the wall to keep from slamming face first into it.

"Your what?" he asked, breath coming in uneven pants. "I don't understa-"

"They make drakis out of them," Jensen said. "If they don't have me-"

A handful of men burst through a door just ahead of them and Jensen skidded to a halt fast enough that Jared crashed right into him. They turned to go back the other way only to find it already blocked. 

Jared twisted his wrist and grabbed tightly onto Jensen's hand. "Jensen..."

"It's okay," Jensen said, sounding bizarrely calm. "It's only me they want." He untangled his fingers from Jared's and turned to face him, apparently unconcerned by the men fanning out around them. "That door will take you back to the great hall."

"Jensen," Jared said helplessly. "I don't-"

Jensen smiled. "I'm going to remember you, my Jared. Thank you." He stepped back a handful of steps and looked at Jared with those green, green eyes. "Run," he whispered, and then he _changed_.

Jared ended up flat on his ass, eyes and mouth round as saucers when a pair of leathery wings exploded out of Jensen's back with an almighty tearing of fabric. Jensen's hands and knees hit the floor and his whole body shuddered, shifted, altered, growing larger and longer until the room could barely contain him. Skin gave way to a sea of scales, emerald green and glossy with a metallic copper sheen that seemed somehow terribly familiar. Then Jensen lifted his massive, horned head with a sinuous twist of his neck and Jared found himself looking into familiar eyes in an entirely unfamiliar body. The whole process hadn't taken more than a handful of seconds.

And, impossibly, Jared knew exactly what he was looking at.

"Dragon," Jared breathed, and Jensen looked down at him from a good ten feet above him as if to say _'about time you figured it out'_. 

Jared was absently aware of the sounds of people yelling somewhere nearby, but he couldn't take his eyes away from Jensen long enough to care. None of Jared's paintings had even come close to capturing the sheer majesty of Jensen's dragon form, or the sense of vaguely terrified awe that those wise eyes inspired in him. 

Jared's eyes traced Jensen's body from snout to tail, drinking in the sight. There was something not quite right about some of his scales, Jared realized and he frowned, trying to make sense of the smattering of lighter, vulnerable-looking scales dotting Jensen's flanks. They reminded him of the patchwork spread of still-healing wounds that were the last remnants of the state Jared had found him in, all those months ago.

_They're after my scales_ , Jared's mind echoed and suddenly Jared couldn't breathe for the horror rising up in his throat.

"Jens-"

A shot rang out across the room and Jensen launched himself into the air with a powerful thrust of his massive wings. He let out an almighty roar and flew away, vanishing through an open door with a defiant little flick of his tail. The men charged immediately after him, leaving Jared alone on the floor in the middle of an empty room.

Jared sat there for a long moment, trying to convince his brain that all that had actually happened. Jensen had _kissed_ him. Jensen was a _dragon_. Jensen...

Jensen was basically letting himself get caught so that Jared would have a chance to escape.

"Oh, no you fucking don't," Jared growled, and took off for the great hall at a dead run.

The place was in a panic when he got there. Between gunshots and dragons, Jared would have been considerably shocked if it hadn't been.

He dove into the crush of bodies, ignoring the confused babbling and open demands to know who was responsible for this as he fought his way over to his booth. Danneel was nowhere to be seen but Chris was still there, staring around him with an expression that was mostly confused excitement with a dash of alarm thrown into the mix.

"Where have you been?" he demanded as Jared skidded up. "It's been chaos around here!"

Jared ignored him and started unbuckling the harnesses on his boots with shaking fingers.

"A bunch of guys came in waving guns around," Chris told him, undeterred by Jared's inattention. "Started yelling and shooting people if they got in the way. Power bolted the doors from the outside too, so we're all stuck in here."

Jared toed out of his shoes and stepped into the boots, glad that he'd made them Jared-sized rather than scaling them down for someone smaller. Haste made his hands clumsy on the thick leather as he buckled them closed.

"Then there was all this crazy yelling and banging around and I think there must be so- fuck!"

A broad shadow fell across Jared's face and he looked up to see Jensen soaring through the air, scales flashing in the light and smoke wreathing around his snout. Shots rang out from Jared's right and he was grimly unsurprised to see a gang of gray-suited men standing at the door and firing at Jensen without any regard for the room or its occupants. Stray bolts scored black marks across the walls and Jared could tell that some of the screams filling the air were from pain instead of panic. He wrenched the last belt tight and stood.

"Sweet Vente," Chris swore, head tilted back to watch Jensen zip and dart around the room, trying to avoid the energy blasts. "What the fuck _is_ that?"

"It's a dragon," Jared said. "The Metallurgy Guild harvests their scales to make drakis." He reached across Chris' table to heft one of his gauntlets. "Do these really work?"

"What? 'Course," Chris said, distracted. "Dragons fucking exist? Since when? I don't believe, wait, what are you doing?"

"Sorry," Jared said, clenching hands and feeling the twisting whir of a myriad of tiny gears all the way down the length of the gauntlets. "I'll return them later. Right now, I've got to stop those guys before they enslave my dragon." He flicked the starter switches on the boots and started running, heading straight for the biggest group of gray-suited men.

"The fuck?!" Chris' voice rang out after him but Jared didn't have time to listen. His boots zipped across the polished floor at an alarming speed; at any other time, Jared would have been delighted by just how effective they were. Right now, he could only pray to Vente that they'd be enough to help Jensen.

The guild men didn't even notice Jared's approach until he was practically on top of them. He collided with the closest one fist first, and immediately made a mental note to start pulling his punches when he felt the sick crunch of bone under his hand. Chris' gloves _definitely_ worked. 

Jared managed to knock out a second guy before the rest brought their guns to bear against him instead of Jensen. Jared had never dodged energy bolts before but his boots made it almost too easy. He skimmed across the floor like friction didn't exist, picking up speed with every push until it felt like he was the one standing still and it was the rest of the room that was moving. 

One of them aimed a shot at his left foot and Jared veered instinctively to one side, moving perilously fast. His momentum carried him right up onto the wall, leaving him defying gravity for a handful of fantastic, startled heartbeats. 

Jared couldn't help a slightly hysterical laugh as he slid across the wall and came down right next to the man who'd just shot at him. A quick right cross sent the guy collapsing to the floor and then pain flashed through Jared's brain as a bolt caught him in the thigh, less than an inch above the top of his boot.

Jared's leg buckled and he dropped down into a lower gear to cut his speed before he smeared himself all over the floor. His arms pinwheeled as he fought to keep his balance but the weight of the gauntlets made the movement heavy and awkward. Another shot slammed into the floor less than a foot away and Jared had a split-second realization that he was probably about to die.

A thunderous roar split the air and Jared resisted the automatic urge to recoil when an intense blast of heat skittered past his face. The men who'd been firing at him screamed and collapsed, clutching at their faces, and Jared watched in horror as their skin literally started melting, rolling off in greasy wet globs while they convulsed on the floor.

It was sickening, but Jared couldn't help but admit that it was a fitting end for people who'd mutilated a dragon to make steam run hotter.

A strong gust of much gentler air buffeted against Jared's back and he turned to find Jensen hovering in the air behind him, far too close to the men with guns for Jared's liking.

"Do you want to get shot?" he demanded of Jensen, channeling his swirling emotions into righteous indignation. "Get out of here! Shoo!"

Jensen's ridged head cocked to one side as if to say _'do_ you _want to get shot?'_. Jared had seen human Jensen do the same thing so many times that it was easy to see the man in the creature in front of him.

Jared cocked his head right back. "Don't even start with me, Jensen. We are gonna have words later." 

The whine of an engine flared to life somewhere to his left and Jared decided that later was going to have to wait. 

A quick test proved that putting pressure on his leg hurt like hell but the shot hadn't hit anything especially vital. Glad to know he wasn't going to be bleeding to death anytime soon, Jared pulled off his vest and wrapped it tightly around the wound, looking around the room all the while for a way out of this mess. The doors leading out into the atrium would have been too small for Jensen to get through even if they hadn't been locked and, even though Chris' gloves seemed perfectly capable of making an alternate exit, Jared wasn't too keen on knocking holes in load-bearing walls. He tilted his gaze a little higher and grinned a slightly deranged grin when his attention snagged on the stained glass window set above the doors. 

"I've got an idea," he said to Jensen. He flexed his hands in Chris' gauntlets and threw Jensen a grin. "Follow me."

Jared powered up his boots and took off without waiting for an answer, figuring it was about his turn to do the leading. 

It was much easier to get through the crowd with Jensen at his back, largely because most people seemed more than happy to stay the hell out of their way. Jensen was flying higher again, thankfully, though Jared had no doubt that he'd be back down in an instant if Jared got himself into trouble.

Which meant that Jared had better as hell not screw this up or they'd both wind up caught.

Jared clicked the boots into a higher gear, ignoring the pulsing throb in his leg. People scattered left and right which was good because Jared sincerely doubted his ability to veer around anything at this speed. Shots started sounding behind him again as more guild members burst into the room but Jared ignored them, all of his attention focused on getting this exactly right.

The doors loomed in front of him, growing swiftly closer, and Jared waited until he was nearly on top of them before he dug in his heels and _pushed_ , driving himself into a jump that sent him hurtling right at the window with his arms outstretched and his shoulders braced.

The noise the window made as it shattered was thunderous, a thousand chiming bells echoing in Jared's ears. Bits of glass bit into his skin as he crashed through the window, though the gloves kept his hands and forearms from getting too badly cut up.

He hit the floor on the other side with the force of a cannon ball and ended up in a terribly undignified sprawl in the middle of a forest of coloured glass. A sudden whoosh of air heralded Jensen's own trip through the shattered window and his passage sent another, smaller, rain of glass showering down on Jared's head.

Jared pushed himself shakily to his feet, glad of the protection of the boots and gauntlets as glass crunched beneath him. He skimmed over to the wall and wrenched one of the flag poles out of its cement base, then wrapped it around the handles of the doors.

"That won't stop them for long," he said, and turned to find Jensen watching him with an expression so inscrutable that made human Jensen seem like an open book. This dragon thing was going to take some getting used to.

The doors rattled loudly and Jared could hear cursing coming from the other side. Shots rang out, thudding hollowly into the doors, and Jared figured that was their cue to get out of here.

"Ready to go home?" he asked, stripping off Chris' gauntlets and storing them carefully behind the registration desk. He hoped Chris got them back okay. "I hope you've got room for a passenger, because I'm not sure taking the aerial lift is the best idea right now."

Jensen's head tilted even further. Jared decided to take it as a question.

He pointed up. "Figured I'd let you break some windows too," he said, and Jensen's neck swiveled up as he looked at the elaborate glass dome above them. Jared hated the idea of breaking it, but he decided to feel regretful about that later.

Jensen shifted back onto his haunches and extended his forelegs towards Jared. Jared approached with only a little trepidation; it was rather difficult not to cringe away from the foot long claws tipping each of those green-scaled toes.

The pounding on the doors took on a frightening intensity and Jared swallowed hard as Jensen folded his claws carefully around him. Jared ran a curious hand across Jensen's scales and found them to be as smooth and slick as polished glass. 

Jensen shifted, pulling Jared in close like he was something fragile and precious. A single, powerful beat of his wings launched them into the air and all the breath got punched out of Jared's lungs with the force as they streaked upwards.

The doors burst open and Jared barely had time for a cheeky wave before he was bracing himself against the shuddering impact of Jensen rocketing through one of the glass panes. Jensen's wings protected Jared from the flying glass shards and he let out a triumphant whoop as soon as he caught enough breath to voice it. The city stretched out below them, a chugging patchwork of glinting metal and sober brick and the practical elegance of it left Jared speechless. 

Jensen checked their rapid ascent and banked to the left, wings spread wide. Jared could hear the shouts of people on the ground below as Jensen flew towards the city wall at a speed that was definitely faster than any airship could ever hope to be. The air blew sharp and cold against Jared's face, sending his eyes to watering and his hair to tumbling. Jensen's grip was firm and careful, his claws sliding around Jared in a razor sharp cage. Jared's legs were dangling free and he could feel the weight of his boots wanting to pull him down and reclaim gravity's hold on him until he hit the ground far, far below.

Jared had never felt safer in his life.

"Come on, Jensen," he hollered, the wind snatching the words away almost before he'd voiced them. "Get us out of here!"

Jensen bellowed out a massive roar and flew faster, leaving Yousil and their pursuers far, far behind.

They eventually stopped on a small outcropping of trees halfway up a mountain a good forty miles away from Yousil. Jared's legs gave under him the moment Jensen set him down and he let himself fall, hitting the ground with a quiet 'oomph!'. He felt exhilarated, exhausted, light-headed and cold all the way through.

Jensen settled down beside him and Jared watched as he folded in on himself, wings and scales and claws giving way to the familiar shape Jared had fallen in love with probably the first time he'd seen it.

Jensen looked like he'd been through the wars. His face was drawn and gray and there were fine lacerations on his skin from when he'd torn through the skylight. He was also stark naked which, while something that Jared wasn't opposed to in general, probably wasn't the best idea on top of a mountain in the middle of nowhere. Without the shield of his glasses, Jensen's eyes shone green and glittering in the late afternoon sun.

"Jared," he said, and there was something wary in his tone that Jared didn't care for at all.

"Jensen," Jared said back, smiling. He extended an arm in open entreaty. "I'm not sure I can get up, so you're going to have to come over here because I don't think I can go one more minute without kissing you."

Jensen's steps were slow and cautious as he approached; his expression made it clear that he half-expected Jared to bolt if he came too close. Jared rolled his eyes and yanked Jensen down by one arm as soon as he came into range. Jensen hit the ground awkwardly and Jared wasted no time in pulling him close and kissing him, sharp and fierce.

He pulled back after only a few moments and pressed his cheek to the hot skin of Jensen's shoulder. "Vente, Jensen, don't scare me like that," he whispered. "Thought I was gonna lose you."

Slowly, Jensen's arms came up around Jared's back. Jared made an approving sound and Jensen clenched his fingers in the fabric of Jared's shirt, tightly enough that Jared heard a seam pop. "Same goes for you."

"Seriously, Jensen." Jared pulled back enough to give Jensen an unamused look. "What were you thinking, putting yourself in danger like that?"

"Jared," Jensen said patiently and Jared could happily do nothing besides watch Jensen smile like that for the rest of his life. "If you haven't figured it out by now, you're an even bigger idiot than I thought."

Jared responded to that by kissing Jensen like he wanted to move in permanently, which wasn't all that far from the truth. Jensen was clumsy but eager as he returned the kiss and Jared discovered that the inside of Jensen's mouth was even hotter than the rest of him.

Jared lost track of how long they spent just kissing, getting to know each other with slow, gentle explorations. Eventually Jared drew back, sure his smile was more than a little goofy. "Hi."

"Hi," Jensen smiled back. Then he sobered. "What now?"

"Now," Jared said, after a moment's thought. "I think we should probably get off this mountain and find somewhere to stay for the night. I guess it's not safe to go home anymore, but I'm sure we can find a cave or something."

"I'm sorry," Jensen said, in a quiet, guilty voice.

Jared shrugged, doing his best to ignore the pang that filled him at the realization that he'd probably never see his beloved farm again. "I'll live with it. And I don't think I'd ever have been happy there if you left, anyway, so it's the same thing."

"It's not," Jensen said, but Jared waved him off.

"It's close enough. Besides," he gave Jensen a smile. "We can always build a new one if we want."

"We can." Jensen squared his shoulders. "But there's something I need to do first."

"What's that?"

"I can't have been their only dragon," Jensen said. It was going to take Jared a while to get used to using that particular word so casually. "I want to find the others. Get them out."

Jared nodded. "Our stunt at the Expo is going to cause a whole lot of crazy. We can use that to start getting the word out about what the Metallurgy Guild's been up to. Get the mechanists involved."

Jensen's mouth twisted ruefully. "Never thought I'd think that that was a good thing."

Jared shrugged. "Guess I'm a good influence."

"Not quite the word I was thinking." Jensen leaned in for another soft little kiss then levered himself to his feet. "Ready to go?"

"You going to be okay?" Jared asked, letting Jensen pull him to his feet and only wobbling a little in the process.

"Of course," Jensen sniffed, and gave him a haughty little look that was so reminiscent of the first day Jared had seen him that Jared couldn't help laughing.

Jensen cocked an eyebrow. "What?"

"You're fantastic," Jared said honestly. "You would not believe how much I love you."

"Oh," Jensen said, his smile clear in his voice even as his body started to shift. "I think I just might."

~fin

**Author's Note:**

> All kinds of massive thank yous to my lovely and talented artist [onceuponarhi](http://onceuponarhi.livejournal.com)! *applause* She has been unfailingly enthusiastic and supportive, and so understanding when RL held me up. Her art is gorgeous and this story would not be anything at all without her wonderful premise and her support all the way through. Visit her [Art Post](http://inkruns.livejournal.com/222949.html) to see all the art that was included here and much more! Kudos to you, hon!
> 
> For more timestamps and goodies in this verse, check out the [Heart of Everything verse tag](http://cleflink.livejournal.com/tag/verse%3A%20heart%20of%20everything) at my livejournal.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


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